Monday, May 28, 2007

Am i driving on the right side?

Living in Dubai, mean i'll be driving on the left of the car and on the right side of the road. Am i driving on the right side? No idea! In malaysia, i'm driving on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road. Confusing eh? Well the very first time i drove on Dubai road, it does confuse me a bit, not used to have the door on my left side. Used to have girl on my left side, doing something interesting while i'm driving.. wink! wink!


Anyway, driving experience here on a smooth road is wonderful... if you're driving alone on a 6lanes speedway. Max 120kmh limit with loads of fully functioning speed camera (speedtrap summon is around dh210! And no discount!). Well, that's wishful thinking. The mean speedway, the back bone on Dubai is called Sheikh Zayed Road and it's a behemoth 6lanes highway. Here you can see the speed demon driving on the most right side of the road. The Asian, driving on the middle lane. The everyday peoples driving on left lane, and then middle lane, and then right lane and then on the line between two lane and then suddenly hit the break, and honking every now and then. That's the worst of being on the road in Dubai. Majority peoples living here, are not as developed as the nation itself, in term of self-attitude. And this make everyday commuting on Dubai road is a hazardous exercise. That's one of the main reason i don't like it here. Friends said Dubai is nice place to stay, well indeed, but not quite. A nice place to stay, in my vocabs mean, the peoples and places are nice. Here, only the places are nice, but nice for the rich peoples. The peoples... hmmm sad. The weather.... sunny, only good for the laundry. Will i stay here in a long run? NOPE!


One thing appealed to my liking is the car. Well car over here are generally cheap as there're no form of tax. You get to but a Lamborghini Gallardo for Dh690k (in Msia i think around RM1.5mil or more), a Mini Cooper S at Dh100k, a Golf GTi at Dh110k, a Proton Waja 1.6 at Dh39k, a Harley Davidson V-Rod at Dh77k and so on and so forth. Kinda cheap eh? But one need to have a resident visa to buy one, and as for me, i'm still on travelling visa. And for Malaysian, every person are allowed to import in one vehicle per person, but proof has to be made to show that one has stayed in a Country for more than 6months and owned the vehicle for more than 6months (i think, Ma'am Rafidah will know better). Well, tempting, but one problem, all vehicle here are left hand drive and Malaysia road system are right hand drive.


So come to the question? Am i driving on the right side? I'm driving on the right in Malaysia, but is it right? And i'm driving on the left here, but am i wrong? The British, French and American will know how to answer best in this matter.


Story goes ways back in year before car was made known to mankind. Peoples ride horse and cart. In Britain, for dunno wutsoever reason, the Brits rode on the left side of the road. When they joist (dunno how to spell, the sport where two knights go up on each other arse on a horse with a long wooden pole), the hold the pole-thingy on the left hand and the right hand old the horse steering (wut's the thing on horse-neck called eh?), so when they design a car, the Brits decided to drive on the right. So, when they set on the conquest around the world, they spread the how and what they ride in Britain. As for French peoples, they are known to dislike their British neighbor. So to retaliate, they decide not to follow the Brits and ride on the left, instead of right hand. They too, spread around the world (at least to the world they used to conquer) the way people should ride. And when the Brits went to Northern America, they fought with the Yanks and the Yanks made allies with French, so they too don't want to follow the way the Brits ride. So there you go, some lesson in driving not thought at driving school. Luckily, most of the Nation in this world decided on driving on the left or on the right.


What if someone come up with and idea, that the driver of a vehicle should be sitting on the back? Well, in Malaysia, we already practise that method years and years ago, till today. Go to Penang and you'll see some of the trishaw are of such design. 'Driver' at the back, and passenger at the front.


Shhooott... that's a Chinese design....


1 comment:

MK said...

Welcome welcome to the blogging world .. hehe :) :p