Tag Archives: Driving

Saudi Arabia’s women drivers get ready to steer their lives

Driving instructor Ahlam al-Somali (R) reads instructions before getting ready to drive with trainee Maria al-Faraj at Saudi Aramco Driving Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, June 6, 2018. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – On June 24, when Saudi women are allowed to drive for the first time, Amira Abdulgader wants to be sitting at the wheel, the one in control, giving a ride to her mother beside her.

“Sitting behind the wheel (means) that you are the one controlling the trip,” said the architect, dressed in a black veil, who has just finished learning to drive. “I would like to control every single detail of my trip. I will be the one to decide when to go, what to do, and when I will come back.”

Abdulgader is one of about 200 women at the state oil firm Aramco taking advantage of a company offer to teach female employees and their families at its driving academy in Dhahran to support the social revolution sweeping the kingdom.

“We need the car to do our daily activities. We are working, we are mothers, we have a lot of social networking, we need to go out – so we need transport,” she said. “It will change my life.” (Click for Wider Image picture essay https://reut.rs/2thn2qN )

Women make up about five percent of Aramco’s 66,000 staff, meaning that 3,000 more could eventually enroll in the driving school.

Last September, King Salman decreed an end to the world’s only ban on women drivers, maintained for decades by Saudi Arabia’s deeply conservative Muslim establishment.

But it is his son, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is the face of the wider social revolution.

Many young Saudis regard his ascent to power as proof that their generation is finally getting a share of control over a country whose patriarchal traditions have for decades made power the province of old men.

For Abdulgader, June 24 will be the day to celebrate that change, and there is only one person she wants to share it with.

“On June 24, I would like to go to my mother’s house and take her for a ride. This is my first plan actually, and I would like really to enjoy it with my mother. Just me and my mother, without anyone else.”

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Alison Williams)

U.S. pedestrian deaths surge; experts see tie to cellphones

FILE PHOTO: A woman crouches down to take a cell phone photograph as pedestrians walk past in New York, U.S., October 19, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Tom James

(Reuters) – U.S. pedestrian deaths rose sharply for the second year in a row in 2016, according to a study released on Thursday, a trend experts said mirrors increased driver cellphone use and distracted driving.

Last year saw an 11 percent rise in pedestrian deaths over 2015, making it the largest increase in the 40 years that national records have been kept, according to officials with the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices and commissioned the research.

This followed a 9.5 percent increase in 2015.

The study’s author, Richard Retting, called the results “frankly quite startling,” adding that “there’s clearly something happening. This is not a one-off.”

Retting said that he viewed the surge as largely attributable to cellphone use, saying that while it was statistically difficult to rule out other causes entirely, the coinciding rise in deaths and cellphone use suggests a connection.

None of the other factors typically affecting pedestrian deaths – such as population growth, yearly miles driven and walked in the United States – tracked the rise as closely as cellphone use.

Retting said wireless data use on cellphones has shot up dramatically, with 2014-15, the most recent period for which numbers are available, seeing a doubling of the amount of mobile data used in the United States and a 45 percent increase in the number of multimedia messages sent.

A 2016 U.S. Department of Transportation study showed that, while overall numbers for cellphone use in 2014 and 2015 remained relatively flat, the rate of drivers holding up phones and using their hands to manipulate them had more than doubled since 2009, and among the youngest drivers had more than quadrupled.

The replacement of flip phones by smartphones has also increased the risk, said Charlie Klauer, a lead researcher at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

“Smartphones are much much harder to use … and they are far more capable,” Klauer said. “Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook: All of it makes them very dangerous.”

Distracted drivers can also be difficult to catch. While 14 states ban all handheld cellphone use while driving, 32 only prohibit texting, forcing officers to prove drivers seen holding or touching phones were not doing something else, said Kara Macek, a spokeswoman for the governor’s association.

Results among states were mixed in the survey. While 34 saw an increase, 15 states and the District of Columbia saw decreases, and Maine saw no change.

(Reporting by Tom James in Seattle; editing by Patrick Enright and Cynthia Osterman)

Utah enacts lowest U.S. drunken-driving limit

FILE PHOTO: Utah Governor Gary Herbert talks about the state's economic development in Salt Lake City, Utah January 11, 2012. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

By Tom James

(Reuters) – Utah Governor Gary Herbert on Thursday signed a law setting the blood alcohol limit for drunken driving at 0.05, the lowest threshold in the United States, over strong objections from the restaurant and beverage industry.

The proposal lowers the predominantly Mormon state’s blood-alcohol limit from 0.08, currently the standard across all U.S. states, to 0.05 as of Dec. 31, 2018, to try to improve road safety in the state.

“I signed (the bill) into law to help strengthen Utah’s impaired driving laws and to reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths on our roads,” Herbert said in a statement Thursday.

Melva Sine, president of the Utah Restaurant Association, said her organization and other industry groups opposed the measure and see it as likely to hurt the hospitality industry in the state.

“It will be punishing those people who drink responsibly, and go out and enjoy an evening,” Sine said.

The American Beverage Institute, a lobbying group, which had previously taken out ads advocating against the measure in newspapers in the state, earlier condemned Herbert’s plan to sign the bill.

Herbert also said he would call a special legislative session to address the “unintended and collateral consequences” of the law, and to help “modify and improve it.”

The National Transportation Safety Board has advocated for a national 0.05 limit, and its representatives testified twice in support of the Utah bill before the legislature, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The board said studies show that impairment starts after one drink, even at blood-alcohol levels as low as 0.04, the limit for commercial truck drivers nationwide.

(Reporting by Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Sandra Maler)