When Mayhem Strikes

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We knew it would happen eventually. As bad as some of the drivers here are, it was inevitable. Yet, it was still a bit of a shock when a guy in a small minibus ran into the back of our car as we were in stop-n-go traffic (well, really “stop traffic”, but he somehow had enough momentum to ram the back of our bumper).

The impact was very minor and no one was even close to injured (thank goodness), but the result highlighted some of the differences between here and home that we wanted to share.

First, you call “999” – our equivalent of 911 – and they connect you, not to the police, but SAAED, a company hired by the police to deal with most traffic accidents.

Next, SAAED comes to get everyone’s side of the story, issues the ticket/blame, and then everyone moves on. The driver of the minibus didn’t speak English, and Arabic wasn’t our strong suit, so SAAED was the only party with both sets of information.

All in all, we were lucky – it was clearly not our fault, the SAAED person found us just fine, and the whole process took a half hour…leaving us with enough time to save the ice cream melting in the back.

Budget helped us out the next day, and took the SAAED report to the police for processing (and potential payment of a fee – who knows, we’ll probably owe something at some point). But, for now, safe travels to all…

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