11 March, 2008

CARNAGE

Hot off the email - photos of the carnage this morning.

















12 comments:

Magnus Nystedt said...

That's scary.

existential al ain said...

How did that happen? How could so many drivers not be paying attention at the same time?

Keef said...

I used to hate driving in fog in Dubai. I think I had a pretty good idea of how to do it, but there was always the fear that other drivers didn't and I'd get rammed up the backside by someone who thought that if you had your hazard lights on you could safely drive at any speed.

This is absolutely appalling. 6 dead, 20 injured, 200 vehicles involved. It's not like fog never happens in the UAE: it happens every winter. Drivers need to be trained in how to deal with it.

Keef said...

Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point.

It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article say 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.

Anonymous said...

I agree with keefieboy: It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance.
I also agree with: that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind.
That’s the dilemma that one may face if he is trapped in heavy fog suddenly…

Anonymous said...

And it made CNN news too: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/11/emirates.wreck/index.html#cnnSTCText
Some nice publicity for UAE there, especially the last four lines.

One has to wonder how could something like that happen? I hope the police and the RTA take that as a sign and will actually implement something more serious than the black points system they have now. (like take all the bad drivers off the roads and when they take away the license, don't just give it back to them X months later, make the person go through the driver training again; if he lost the license in the first place, surely he cannot be 'fit to drive' especially after supposedly not being able to drive a car for the amount of months he's not had a license)

Assistant Editor said...

Here some more:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/SectionHomeL.asp?section=theuae

Assistant Editor said...

We were traveling to Abu Dhabi today morning and I saw the 4 accidents. Absolutely unbelievable ! I haven't seen even on TV so many cars crashed together that badly. Some were total lost, others melted.
It looked like more than 200 cars crashed. Still hard to believe what I saw - like a horror movie, but much much worse...
I truly hope the media reports for only 6 deaths are correct. So far 317 have bean counted as injured.
God help them all!
.......I received few(?) black points for taking pictures while driving......

ĄηğэĻĭšTїÇ said...

Scary~~!!

Em said...

at the risk of sounding extremely moronic, why were the cars on fire? most bang-ups i've seen on the road don't cause cars to burst in flames. and in this case, it seemed like every single car caught fire...

rosh said...

You know, the same Q kept ringing over and over in my mind. It's like they were instantly up in flames on impact or something?

The flames seem to be on the cars, rather than spread across the highway - which should have been the case, given leaking petrol?

Doesn't make sense to me either.

Anonymous said...

Are these pictures yours? If they were captured by you then contact Gulf news office asap. They have declared a special prize for the origninal photographer.

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