"Do you often drive around?"

Some weeks ago I would have mentioned, not without blushing, that if I do not drive in Dubai, it's because i do not have my driving license. This changed a month ago when I finally passed it, 10 years after I enrolled for the first time in a driving institute in Paris.

My first thoughts went to my friends as they would not be able to tease me anymore on the topic, asking me each time we would meet "so, how is the driving going?". As much as i fell proud, I also turned fairly concerned. If you ever travelled around in the Middle East (and probably with a certain equation that the easter you travel, the worse it gets), you'd know how crazy traffic can be on a quantitative but mainly on a qualitative basis. As much as I think I drive well - even better than a lot of people here - my exam was max 10mn long while an assessment in Europe would have been much longer and probably much more demanding and thorough.

Moreover, driving against the rules is not punished as strictly as it is at home, as it should be, on my opinion. Sadly you can read cases of deadly car crashes almost everyday in the news due to combined factors such as speeding, crazy change in lanes, bad distance management between vehicles, poor technical controls. Yesterday a mother and her three kids got killed when her car litterally split while hitting the car coming from the other side, as the driving husband fell asleep. Last week, when i drove officially for the first time on the highway, we got diverted as a truck driver missed control and his vehicle fell in the middle of the lanes (news said his body was smashed from the accident, no one else got killed or injured). Last example but not least, 24 workers got killed 3 weeks ago in their comuting bus as it got covered by the 75 tons of sand the truck before was transporting. Speed, tail gating and poor braking systems were blamed.

So yes, I can drive, I actually enjoy it a lot; but the thruth is, I am also a little concerned to join a system where anticipating what the others can do and how badly they will follow the rules are key aspects for your safety (rather than expecting them to know what they're doing). Now i truly embrace the concept of "defensive driving" I was told about in the institute.