NEWS FROM UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Speeding rich drivers could soon feel the pinch
DUBAI - MAR 25: Drivers who speed or jump a red light could be fined according to how much money they make – and on the spot, under new proposals to make traffic offences more painful.
Currently, all drivers pay the same fines. That means that some wealthier drivers collect dozens of tickets, but do not feel much of a financial pinch. They can do so in the knowledge that multiple driving offences will be cleared from their record within a year and that the fines will make no difference to their insurance premiums.
Since most people also only pay their fines once a year, they also fail to make the connection between what they have done wrong and the penalty.
“If someone is earning Dh50,000 (US$13,000) or Dh60,000 a month, a few thousand dirhams worth of fines is nothing,” Dr Ali al Marzouqi, the head of public health and safety at the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), told the Arab Children’s Health Congress yesterday.
“Of course, to some people it is, so it would not be fair to increase the amounts for everyone.
Mr al Marzouqi was one of a number of officials who made a link between the lack of effective penalties and the UAE’s dismal road safety record. They indicated the DHA was working with the Roads and Transport Authority on a plan to reduce accidents and deaths that could include linking traffic fines to income and fining people on the spot.
“We can link car insurance to the numbers of fines people get,” he added.
“Someone who has been driving safely for the whole year should have a better insurance rate than someone that has had several accidents or speeding tickets.”
In most western countries, insurance premiums are calculated according to a driver’s record of motoring offences, among other things.
Here, insurance companies do not have access to driving records and any black points for bad driving are erased from driving licences after a year.
Mustafa Vazayil, the managing director of Gargash Insurance, said: “It would be much better if insurance companies had access to drivers’ records. Good drivers could be rewarded with lower premiums.”
Pirate shot dead in attack on UAE ship
UAE - MAR 25: Private security guards on board a UAE-owned cargo ship shot dead a pirate attempting to hijack the vessel off the coast of Somalia.
The incident is the first in which a hijacker has been killed by private contractors being used increasingly by shipping companies to protect their vessels in pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa.
The “armed private vessel protection detachment” on board the MV Almezaan returned fire when three pirate boats attacked the ship early Tuesday morning, according to the European Naval Force (EU Navfor), which responded to a distress call.
The Spanish frigate ESPS Navarra rushed to the scene to help fight off two skiffs and a “mother ship” that held a total of seven pirates. One pirate was found dead in one of the skiffs.
“In a very short space of time the Navarra was on the scene and they had rounded up the pirates,” said Cmdr John Harbour, a spokesman for Navfor. “There was evidence of a firefight and the skiffs were riddled with bullet holes.”
The six remaining pirates were detained by the ESPS Navarra and the mother ship was destroyed. Navfor said the pirate who died had “small-calibre gunshot wounds”.
Cmdr Habour hopes those captured will be prosecuted.
“We are doing an investigation at the moment and gathering evidence,” he said. “Then they could face trial in either the country that caught them or one of the nations in the region.”
There is no other recent incident of a pirate being shot dead by a private contractor in an attack. Pirate skiffs usually retreat when fired upon, but after the Almezaan’s guards repelled the first attempt the pirates pursued the ship and attacked it again. “This pirate group was particularly determined,” said Cmdr Harbour.
The Almezaan is registered in Panama but owned by Dubai-based Biyat International. It is the third time it has been attacked by pirates. The prior incident was last November.
On Tuesday the ship was en route to Mogadishu when it was attacked about 100km south of Haradere, near the coast.
Her most recent port of call is not known, but she left Ajman in November.
Pirates are increasingly widening their net as the Gulf of Aden is patrolled by maritime security vessels.
A Turkish ship was hijacked in the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, closer to India than Somalia and 400 nautical miles outside Navfor’s patrols. On the same day a Bermuda-flagged vessel was taken 120 nautical miles off Oman.
“They’ve been pushed out of their favourite hunting grounds,” said Cmdr Habour. “They might be loitering for several days, be running out of fuel and fresh water and be forced to attack. Whether the boat is armed or not they aren’t going to care. They’ll be desperate.”
The Almezaan incident has increased fears of escalating violence in the fight against piracy. The International Maritime Organisation is among groups that have raised concerns over the growing use of private security contractors.
“The more weapons you have on board merchant vessels the higher the risk that violence at sea increases,” said Peter Lehr, a piracy expert from St Andrew’s University in Scotland.
“People will die – innocent people, innocent fishermen, pirates and seafarers.”
Dr Lehr said while many firms providing maritime security are highly professional, some shipping companies go for cheaper options because they are under financial pressure as the industry struggles.
“There are very well-managed teams that know how to react under fire and aren’t that trigger happy, but they come at a certain cost,” Dr Lehr said, adding that the “rock bottom” option have very little training and no clear rules of engagement.
Dr Lehr recommends evasive manoeuvring and travelling at high speeds through piracy-prone areas rather than using armed security.
However, Theodore Karasik, the head of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, described armed security guards on merchant ships as a “necessary evil” and said if pirates know there are armed guards on board, that knowledge acts as a deterrent.
Tuesday’s incident also raises questions over who will hold private security firms responsible if there is found to be wrongdoing.
“If it’s Somali waters, Somalia is a failed state, so they can’t be tried there,” Dr Lehr said. “If it’s international waters then it should be the ship’s flag’s state, which in this case is Panama, but there are a whole raft of problems.”
Four central Dubai roads to have bus lanes
DUBAI - MAR 25: Motorists in Dubai will lose a lane on some of the city’s roads when dedicated bus and taxiways are introduced in May.
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is introducing the lanes on four roads in the city centre at a cost of Dh8.5 million (US$2.3m).
Signs will be visible on the four roads beforehand but the police will not enforce the new rules until May 15. Motorists who use a bus lane at any time of day will risk a Dh600 fine.
The agency will take 16 buses off the roads after the lanes are in use because it expects the change to reduce congestion, said Mattar al Tayer, the RTA chairman and executive director.
“The project will also contribute to slashing the operational costs of buses deployed on these routes by Dh10.4m, minimise the demand for parking spaces at congested spots, reduce the environmental pollution rates caused by private vehicle exhausts and decrease the number of road accidents,” he said.
Emergency services vehicles, taxis and public buses from other emirates will be allowed to use the bus lanes. The police and RTA will meet after the lanes have been in use for three months to iron out any problems that may arise.
Perhaps predictably, some RTA users approved of the move in hopes of getting quicker service, while some drivers were concerned about car traffic growing more crowded with fewer lanes available.
Jimmy Cielos, a 31-year-old Filipino, takes the bus every day from the Satwa area to work at the BurJuman centre and said he liked the plan. One of the new bus lanes will originate from the Satwa roundabout.
“I think it is a good idea,” Mr Cielos said. “Sometimes traffic is really bad here but usually I reach work in about 10 minutes. Now I should be able to get there faster.”
People who get about by car were not convinced. Ali Kamal, 33, a sales executive from Lebanon, said the new plan would make a bad situation worse.
“I drive everywhere and there are not enough lanes even now,” he said. “Traffic in the evenings is so bad around Satwa it will only congest other areas. It would not make me want to use a bus because the lanes are so short and I need my car to get around quicker.”
Some who make their living in the transport industry approved of the plan. John Hughes, a traffic expert with ARRB Dubai, said bus lanes had proved successful in other cities. “Any priority given to buses makes public transport more attractive for passengers,” he said. “If it cuts travel times in areas with high traffic condition, it has shown that people will make the move from their cars to public transport.”
The bus lanes will be:
Along Al Mankhool Road from Satwa roundabout up to Sheikh Rashid Road for 1,400 metres.
Along Al Khaleej Road from its intersection with Khalid bin Al Waleed Road as far as Al Musalla Road, opposite the Hyatt Regency hotel. That lane will run for 3,600 metres.
Along a 220-metre limited-access stretch of the notoriously congested Khalid bin Al Waleed Road from the intersection with Al Mina Road up to Road 16.
Along 320 metres of Al Ghubaiba Road from the intersection with Al Mina Road as far as Road 12.
The idea to build the lanes is not a recent one. Eisa Abdul Rahman al Dosari, the chief executive of Public Transport Agency, the RTA parent company, said they were always part of the city’s transport master plan.
“We studied the movement of the buses and we monitored the buses on the road,” he said. “We pinpointed and identified the places on the roads where the buses experienced significant and late arrivals. In the future, we will have to study the buses’ movements.”
The 5.6km of bus lanes are a good start according to Mr al Dosari, who said the agency wanted to provide more bus lanes to and from Metro stations. An express bus lane was also being considered, he said.
Officials expect the economic benefits of the lanes to be spread across the system. Maitha bin Udai, the chief executive of the RTA’s Traffic and Roads Agency, said 98,000 bus users would benefit from the plan daily, about a third of the total number of riders.
“We based it on certain calculations, such as the ridership, the time saved on the roads per hour and took into consideration the value of time for the road user,” she said. “We ended up with the conclusion that it could save [passengers] Dh104m per year.”
Dubai has 1,540 buses running on 119 routes and carrying 325,000 passengers on an average day. The RTA says there is a bus every 10 to 15 minutes at every stop. The agency wants 30 per cent of residents using public transport by 2020.