Road Runner and the Radar Rotters

One of the things that’s kept me so long in the UAE is the fact that it’s such a very paradoxical place: there’s never one simple answer or one simple fact, a single explanation or a unitary truth. Even better, the variety of complexities are usually deliciously oppositional.

For instance, we enjoy one of the world’s lowest crime rates and live in one of the safest environments the globe has to offer. And at the same time the number of deaths on our roads is remarkably high – traffic accidents are an everyday commonplace, so much so that, with humanity’s remarkable penchant for adaptability, we tend to accept driving past the blood-chilling wreckage of interlocked cars as a mere fact of life. Many actually slow down for a good old peek, an Eastern morbid fascination that irritates those from the West, who fidget and moan at the delays caused by the rubberneckers.

The response to a number of high profile road tragedies and the consequent growing howl of outrage from media and public was to introduce a huge number of new speed cameras. I don’t know how much radar the human body can cope with, but many of us are now being multiply irradiated daily (as well as being RFIDed by the glorious Salik system!) as the vast network of fixed and mobile radars grows. They’re springing up everywhere, particularly the mobile ones.

And the mobile ones are most fun.

It’s like Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner out there, it really is. They set them up behind bushes, traffic signs, concrete blocks, dustbins or any other roadside impediment they can find. They park up on the roadside with the radar gun and flash unit in front of the bonnet, set up by the tailgate or snuck into the back of an estate car. There’s even one unit that’s a van with a circular and rectangular window cut into the back to accommodate the hardware. All it needs is a sign on the side saying 'ACME Radar Unit'...

They set up the cameras and park their, usually relatively distinctive (in the Khawaneej area you’ll find a silver estate and a sea-green metallic hatchback are the cars of choice) motors around the corner so you don’t spot ‘em. One of them has the delightful habit of parking his car on the hard shoulder and putting the camera 200 meters or so back up the road from it so that the radar catches you before you slow down in case the car is a radar unit. This is only averagely sneaky – there’s one bozo in Sharjah who likes to set up his mobile camera a hundred metres or so after one of the fixed cameras, so they get you as you speed up past the fixed one. Like I said, it’s Road Runner style stuff!

But the one that really fires me up is the joker who sets up on my way to work: the Academic City road between Khawaneej and the Al Ain road. This four-lane stretch of gently curving asphalt runs through 100% desert: there’s not a house, factory or other building on it. If ever there was a road that should carry a 120kph limit (the UAE maximum), this was it. And the limit, insanely, is 80. It’s almost impossible to drive that stretch of long desert road at 80kph. You’d go mad. They’d find you naked and running, gibbering, through the ghaf trees.

So it’s rich pickings for our evilly giggling little friend. Convention dictates that radar cameras in the UAE trigger at 20kph above the limit. So you do 101kph down the Academic City road and he’s nailed you with a Dhs200 fine.

But wickedness can bring out the best in people. UAE nationals, expats, Europeans, Indians, Pakistani truck drivers and all – I’ve watched as drivers warn others about the hidden camera, flashing hazard lights, brake lights or even putting arms out to flag down those jazzing it up in the fast lane. I have thanked and been thanked in my turn by others as people from around the world are brought together, for a few brief and human seconds, by the collective desire to save our fellow men from the predatory and unfair practices of the Radar Rotter.

Roger The Radar Rotter

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Roger the Radar Rotter generally lurks around the Sharjah University City area. His favourite places are the roads around the AUS campus, the back road that tracks along the landfill from the logistics center to the roundabout by Sharjah English School and the Middle Road from the Mileiha Road up to the 311. Oh! And also on the stretch of Middle Road just beyond the 311 turnoff towards Sharjah City.

He's more Wile E. Coyote than most. He likes to hide his little portable radar behind a lamp post and then drive a few hundred yards up the road and lurk, no doubt giggling softly to himself and drooling, waiting for the flashes to go off.

Knowing full well that we skittish victims can sniff he's around when he parks up, he often hides the car. This means the wary are rewarded with glimpses of cars parked in odd places as more trusting souls trigger the cheery 'pop' of the radar followed by the inevitable 'cherching' of the Sharjah Police cash register.

It's an expensive game these days: they've just put the fines up. So why speed at all? You ask, in all sensibility.

Well, the reason Roger has quite so much fun with his sneaky tricks is he likes to pick roads that have insane 60kph limits on them. The roads around the University are, for instance, long and straight and have two lanes. They are nowhere near any crossings or habitation, just long tarmac stretches running along outside the high campus walls. The UAE, very sensibly IMHO, has a 'grace limit' of 20kph above the actual speed limit, so you can travel a maximum 80kph on these roads. Nudge it just 1 kilo above it when Roger's around and POW you're toast, bub.

The wee back road behind Sharjah English is a long straight line of blacktop running along a fence and surrounded by scrubland. The low speed limits make the drive interminably frustrating and the old speedometer does rather tend to sneak up a little. And then you spot, out of the corner of your eye, a glint of something out of place. Slow down, pass by regally and breathe a little sigh of relief as Roger sits in his hidden car, shaking his fists and snarling, 'Damn you McNabb!'

The other day I was driving thusly, overtaking a very slow lorry on the road behind SES. I had spotted Roger's car on the hard shoulder ahead and was taking things easy, when I get some spotty Herbert in an FJ giving it socks on the flashers and horn behind me. With a resigned sigh I pulled in beyond the front of the lorry and moderated my speed.

With satanic glee, I watched my tormentor speed past me, honouring me with a great display of shade thrown sideways as he hit the throttle to let me know one of us was a real man with a real right foot and the other a sissy rated by all and sundry as less than zero.

Boom!

Tisshhhh...

I felt a little like Elric of Melniboné, Michael Moorcock's anti-hero whose sword feasts on souls and passes a little of the energy to its tragic albino* wielder.

For I had given Roger the soul he craved but the benefit, my precioussss, was mine, all mine...

*Apparently these days we're supposed to say 'person of albinism' but frankly, my dear...