Day 299 - Sleeping Policemen

Image of the Abu Dhabi corniche by Visit Abu Dhabi, via Flickr.com

Our house was just a block away from the corniche, the beautiful drive along the beach front of Abu Dhabi city. Every city in every country on the southern side of the Gulf that has two names had a coast-side road called the corniche, named after The Corniche leading from the south of France to Monaco. The name didn't really fit the Gulf roads since a corniche is a road at the top of a ledge that falls away quickly. The Lower Corniche, the road most often referred to as The Corniche and one of the three corniches leading into Monaco, just happens to fall away quickly to the Mediterranean Sea. The Gulf countries figured out that being next to the sea was a factor, so they used that as the basis for naming their roads by the sea. One thing the Abu Dhabi corniche had in common with The Corniche of southern France was that young men wanted to drive their sports cars very fast along it.

Image of Moyenne Corniche in the south of France
by unertlkm, via Flickr.com

While the Abu Dhabi corniche did not pose the danger of falling off the side of a cliff in a fiery crash, it did pose some significant dangers to the people frequenting the shops that lined the non-Gulf side of the road and the residents of nearby homes. Our house was located one block away, but it was a very significant one block. It was positioned at the end of the portion of the road that the sportscar loving drivers raced, and that meant they had to go around the block -  our block - to get back to the road for the return leg of the race. And many didn't slow down during that drive around the block.

In addition to all those cats, there were children living along our street. Small children. Children who could easily find their way into the streets when chasing after a ball or a kitten. And Alex decided something needed to be done.

Image of a sleeping policeman by | Kenneth |,
via Flickr.com

There were speed bumps, devices the Brits like Alex refer to as sleeping policemen, all over the United Arab Emirates - even on the highway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Speed bumps were the only way to get drivers to slow down. It was a little disconcerting to be on a highway, driving at a reasonable highway speed, and then run into the speed bumps. But it was even more disconcerting to come across a car that had crashed at high speed - something we saw all too often. So those sleeping policemen were essential, even though annoying, on the highway.

And they were not just little bumps on the road. They were big enough to do some damage to a vehicle if the driver failed to slow down. There were even tales of an Emirati who bought a Lamborghini that he could never get off the island of Abu Dhabi because the speed bumps at the bridge were too high for his car to clear.

Most people hated all the speed bumps, even while recognizing that they were necessary so long as the drivers did not exercise self control on the roads. So the city of Abu Dhabi got lots of complaints about them, many attached to requests - written or spoken loudly - to remove them. So when Alex appeared at the traffic department to talk about sleeping policemen, they thought he was going to request one or more be removed. When he explained that he wanted two of them installed on our street, it caught them by surprise and they agreed.

Word got around the neighborhood that Alex was the one behind the installation of the sleeping policemen and we became the most popular people on the street. We met nearly every neighbor as they brought gifts - usually in the shape of bottles - to thank him for getting the speed bumps.

Even better, the sportscar loving drivers realized it wasn't fun to drive down our street any longer, so they started making their trip around the block to get back to the corniche a block sooner.