UK vs. United Arab Emirates

The UAE was a British protectorate until the 1970s and the British influence on its roads is very evident. Much to my surprise, there are still some examples remaining of black and white signpost poles.

These seem to disappearing but it does give the roads a distinctly fifties feel, particularly as the kerb stones are painted black and white.

Direction signs have a green background for directions to places, a brown background for buildings or facilities (not only tourist attractions but also things like courts, police stations, hospitals - hardly places one wishes to go), a white background for the names of roads and a blue background for freeway direction signs. Patching is used on all signs.

On my first trip to Dubai, I actually thought I had not left London as the lettering used on the road signs is good old Transport (albeit with the odd Helvetica thrown in for good measure). The road sign system itself seems to be mostly British, with a small US and European influence. Signs are bilingual in both Arabic and English.

You can see just how British the road signs look (apart from 'Give Way' is not marked in the inverted triangle - I suspect there is not room for it to be bilingual). Stop signs are octagonal and bilingual. There is the odd variation from British practice, but on the whole, the scene is very UK centric.

This picture shows a freeway off-ramp sign with the non-highway route number shown as a green rectangle (D69 in this case). Exit numbers always seem to stick out, almost as if they were an after thought - I guess it does make them obvious. Freeways are numbered in an E-series and have a different shaped shield - E44 in the next picture.

The main freeway through Dubai is the Sheikh Zayed Road. I think its design purpose was to move traffic smoothly, but in practice it provides taxi drivers opportunities to test the nerves of their passengers, by pretending that the brake light on the vehicle in front has no meaning.

It also allows for large and sporty car owners to practice their bulldozing skills. The latter requires you to drive at 100 mph pus down the 'fast' lane and rely on the driver in front to become frightened and thus move out of the way in the nick of time. No attempt is made to assume that they will not give way.

Needless to say, every rush hour has some accidents and bad ones cause tailbacks of miles. When you consider that this road is seven lanes in each direction for a lot of its length, then that represents an awful lot of people. I also heard a story of a man who crossed 14 lanes of traffic with a suitcase, left it on the far side of the freeway, then cross back across 14 lanes, pick up the next suitcase and repeat many times. It is not unusual to see people walking down the central reservation and for cyclists to be seen using the road. Be scared, very scared!

Incidentally, the building in the middle of the picture above is under construction and is now the second tallest structure on the planet and will be the tallest when it's finished.

Lane information signs have a red border, similar to the British Military base direction signs. This struck me as a good idea as it borrows on the red border element of warning signs.

A "place" brown backed sign.

This is an example of a road name sign, white on black.

In urban areas, clear directions seem to be given, but the road markings seem to fade - probably the tarmac gets so hot, that the line markings soak in.

The thing that struck me is that despite the lane indiscipline and tail gating, a red light is observed scrupulously, as are yellow boxes. Police position themselves at key junctions and just take the registration number of red light and box jumpers; no one is stopped, they just get a letter in the post. Hmmm - perhaps that is why.

I found one example of a Belisha Beacon representing a pedestrian crossing. Despite the empty looking road in the picture (left), it was a camera lie I can assure you - your correspondent treated it with some caution!

This is how pedestrian crossings seem to be mostly marked these days.

The road markings are white for lane dividers and yellow for the side of the road, or to denote the division of different traffic directions on the two way stretches. No parking stretches seem to be denoted by painting the kerbs yellow and black.

Finally, road works - lots of them. Dubai is going through a huge construction phase just now. Everywhere is carpeted in cranes and the roads are full of construction trucks and buses for the workers (including some new 'Ashok Leyland' models still using the old Leyland logo incidentally). Signs at road works have a yellow background as they do in France.

So the other feature (beside the use of the Transport alphabet) that gives familiarity to British drivers is the abundance of traffic cones - good old British standard examples.

And they are everywhere - I think Terry Wogan is right when he suggests they are taking over the world!