Roads in Doha!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I think there will be much to say about this over the first few months)

The roads are very deceptive as Doha is much larger in size than when seen via a map or Google Earth. Ring-Roads are 6 lanes wide at least, as are some of the main arterial roads, plus there are many with slip-roads along the sides to access the shops etc. So while something may look like it is not far away, it is actually all quite deceiving.

For some reason everything is interconnected via roundabouts. Now while to some this may at first seem good, I think it is one of the main problems as this causes a constant flow of traffic from one roundabout to another and along most of the major roads with nothing to actually break the flow. Added to this is the amount of four wheel drives flying along the road (speed limits optional) and everyone changing lanes whenever they want or making there own when 2 or 3 or 4 lanes just isn’t enough. Not too mention the fact that only a few people use the 3 lane roundabouts as 3 lane roundabouts – one lane for left, one for straight, one for right – instead once you manage to get the nose of the car far enough into the flow to push into the roundabout itself because someone coming towards your car has to slow down and not just ram your car, you then have to negotiate the magic-roundabout in terms of everyone going in whatever direction they want once there. As soon as you exit this circle of chaos you take a breath and prepare for the next one.

It may be just me, but if the road rules here were actually enforced it would not only be a safer place to drive, but most of the problems on the road would disappear overnight. They are slowly adding in traffic lights at some major intersections, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to go through the messy roundabouts to make it to the relative safety of the traffic lights (although even there, there are more cars lined up along the front than there are lanes at times).

One of the best comments heard thus far was when someone showed a level of surprised when we tried to explain that traffic in Australia is not as crazy as this (i.e. people actually follow the road rules) and that we thought this was just plain dangerous… the response to that was driving in Kuwait is twice as bad as Qatar… we are not going driving there… EVER!

M