Tag: emergency lanes

Around KD1 million of those fines is from me alone. [Link] (it’s in Arabic)

via Sala6a

On my way to Khiran yesterday I noticed a few of the speed cameras on the 30th had been rotated to face the front of the cars instead of the rear. I didn’t take a photo but a reader sent me the one above and told me he had spotted rotated cameras on the 5th, 6th and 7th Ring Roads as well.

At first I thought they might have something to do with the emergency lanes being available for the public to use but I don’t think thats the case anymore. I found rotated cameras on parts of the highway that didn’t have any emergency lanes so that theory didn’t work. My best guess now is they’ve just rotated some cameras so that people can start slowing down much sooner than before.

Thanks Dragos

According to an instagram post by the Ministry of Interior, the emergency lanes on some of the major highways are now open to the general public to use from 6AM to 10PM as long as you don’t exceed 45km/h. The roads are the ones highlighted in blue in the map above. Their post is in Arabic so I couldn’t understand most of it but looking at the map my best guess is the emergency lanes they’re talking about are on the 30th, 40th, 50th and 60th roads, as well as the 5th and 6th Ring Roads.

Now for a bit of venting…

Why isn’t this information on their website? What about all the expats like me who can’t read Arabic? Why is the road open only from 6AM to 10PM? I mean if it’s open during the whole day why not just keep it open 24/7 instead of making it illegal after 10PM. It just complicates things. And why are they limiting the speed to 45km/h? Why don’t they just pave the road and turn it into a proper lane and again simplify things. It’s as if they still haven’t made up their minds on if they should completely cancel the emergency lanes or keep them.