Ben Gilbert reports that authorities in Lebanon are trying to improve on the enforcement of traffic laws in the country. Many Lebanese have traditionally ignored traffic laws, and corrupt officials have looked the other way.
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI's THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI's THE WORLD is the program audio.
MARCO WERMAN: Your DNA might determine a lot of things, but how you drive is not entirely determined by your genes. A much bigger influence probably are the traffic laws in the country where you live and whether police actually enforce them. In Lebanon that's a relatively new concept, but things are changing as Ben Gilbert reports from Beirut.
BEN GILBERT: Tariq Adhum's attitude toward traffic lights is common here.
TARIQ ADHUM: Some red lights are useless; I don't care about the regulations.
GILBERT: So you decide which red lights you want to stop at?
ADHUM: Yes, I decide that and most Lebanese does.
GILBERT: Tariq admits this attitude contributes to Lebanon's chaotic streets. He compares driving here to rally car racing. There's no real driver's education or certification in Lebanon. Tariq says a hundred-dollar bribe will get you a driver's license.
ADHUM: I got my driving license without a test, without nothing, with paying a little bit extra money, the driving license came to me to my home. I didn't see where they made it.
GILBERT: So you didn't have to do anything?
ADHUM: I didn't have to do anything, but I already knew how to drive but the tests are a little bit hard, so I practiced on my car over four years and now I'm an excellent driver.
GILBERT: After hearing that you probably won't be surprised to hear that 850 people have died on Lebanon's roads this year according to NGOs that track the statistics. That's nearly twice the traffic fatality rate in the U.S.
MONA KHOURI AKL: Driving in Lebanon, it's survival of the fittest.
GILBERT: Mona Khouri Akl is President of the Youth Association for Social Awareness, a public safety group. To show how easy it is to get a license in Lebanon her organization bought licenses for two blind men and a woman who was killed in a car accident two years earlier. Akl says corruption is helping to fuel Lebanon's deadly driving habits.
AKL: Due to the corruption you find people who don't care about safety of others.
GILBERT: But now the country's new Interior Minister has ordered traffic police to start enforcing the rudimentary of laws. Here on a highway north of Beirut two motorcycle cops look for drivers talking on their cell phones, which is illegal here. They're also keeping an eye out for seatbelt scofflaws and drivers going the wrong way down one-way streets. The officers have written about 25 tickets today, 15 for speeding. The fine is about $32. Lebanese drivers often try to use connections to try to get out of paying, but that won't work anymore says Traffic Department Head Colonel Joseph Doueihy. "We are being strict with people," he says. "The Minister ordered that no tickets will be stopped due to interference from other ministries or government officials. We've done good work on this issue." Doueihy is head of a new agency tasked with enforcing traffic laws. He says his officers gave out 24,000 tickets this fall, a 40 percent increase over the same period last year. Marc Sirois, Managing Editor of Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper says the crackdown seems to be making a difference.
MARC SIROIS: Most a time I get into a taxi these days the taxi driver tells me to put on my seatbelt and it's the first time, and I've been here 11 years, the first time--I mean, most of the taxi drivers removed the seatbelts from their cars until a few years ago. Now they're actually telling you to put it on.
GILBERT: Sirois says he sees the move as part of an effort by the new Minister to restore some faith in a government that Lebanese view is corrupt, weak and ineffective.
SIROIS: The whole idea of proper driving laws is a microcosm of the entire social contract, because if you and I live in the same society and you voluntarily give up some of your rights, you do that and I do that, and we sacrifice those rights to the State and the State looks after that level of our interaction, then the rest of our interactions become much more liberal. And that's the same thing when you get right down to driving, that's what it is. You have to have confidence that the guy next to you is gonna follow the rules.
GILBERT: At this point there's still not much confidence in the government or that any Lebanese driver is going to follow any rules, but his own. So Colonel Doueihy is pushing Parliament to increase ticket fines. He says Lebanon's drivers will start to obey the law when violating it costs them money. For The World, I'm Ben Gilbert, Beirut.
transcript