While anything that fosters safer driving on the roads of Saudi Arabia is welcomed, this Saudi Gazette story is a bit of an eye-popper. Of the 500 Saudis signing up for a defensive driving course, 200 of them are women. Women, of course, can’t drive (yet) in Saudi Arabia. This suggests that either they are getting ready to be granted permission to drive or there’s going to be a tremendous increase in backseat driving in the Kingdom!
Defensive driving starts up in Jeddah
Mohammed Al-Kinani Saudi GazetteJEDDAH – A surprisingly large turnout of women marked the launch here Sunday of the Arab world’s first academy for defensive driving.
Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia but their huge participation in the launch of Safra Defensive Driving Academy (SDDA) at Jeddah Raceway here suggests that Saudi society is closing ranks to assume collective social responsibility for reducing the Kingdom’s high road-death and injury rates, considered among the highest in the world.“Our interest in the event is because the men in our family drive,” said one woman who asked not to be identified. “Besides, we are driven around by men.”
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November:10:2008 - 23:00
Is there a change coming soon? I wonder if these 200 women are experienced drivers that already have licenses from foreign countries. They’d ideally be the ones to kick off the new policy.
November:10:2008 - 23:03
I’d guess that they are all licensed (somewhere) drivers. There are thousands of Saudi women who hold licenses from foreign countries.
There are also hundreds of Saudi women who already drive, without licenses, in rural areas, but I suspect they’re not in this group.
November:10:2008 - 23:24
I’d think the “rural” drivers would not be the ones to make the potential new program successful. There’s a huge risk with making this transition with female drivers who never had formal training and sufficient city driving experience. My money is on the foreign licensed drivers. They can go first, then a year later it can be opened up to licensing new women to drive.
There is no longer any denying the fact that some women in the KSA want to drive or are not capable of driving. The list of excuses is getting shorter.
November:11:2008 - 10:56
While my record for predicting just when Saudi women would be permitted to drive has been poor (I thought they would have this privilege by the end of last year), Saudi women will drive in the not too distant future.
A half-way step is likely to be taken at first. Women above a certain age, with jobs that require their driving to work, will be given permission first, I think. Not entirely fair, but probably as far as the culture will permit.
Of course, there will be a flock of vultures waiting to pounce on the first woman who misuses the privilege…
November:11:2008 - 12:44
John you mention driving as a “privilege”. Do you really view it that way as a privilege versus a right?
November:11:2008 - 13:33
Sure, it’s a privilege, not a right. If it were a right, it could not be a licensed activity. Anyone could simply get a key, get in a car, and take off on the road.
Instead, various authorities around the world set minimal requirements for obtaining a license to drive: age, physical ability, passing a written test on the laws pertaining to driving, etc.
There are lots of things in life that we take so much for granted that we begin to believe they are ‘rights’, but only seem to be.
Is there a ‘right’ to a job? To an education? To medical care beyond a minimum? To a guaranteed wage?
These are all political questions with political answers. Most of them are subject to intense debate, law suits, and political activism. Some may be enshrined as ‘rights’ at some future point; some may not.
No one knew that American’s had a right to privacy until the Supreme Court told them so in the 1960s, for instance.
November:11:2008 - 21:28
Thank you for the explanation. I can see the intense debate therein.
I think basic transportion should be a right all humans have the right to pursue above a specified age. Of course if one is mentally incapable and such examples whereby they would pose danger to others then that right is not longer a right in those particular cases. Overall I say women should have the right to drive…
Imobility is depressing!
I also think women have the right not to be treated like children and that they have the right to act like adults.
November:11:2008 - 22:11
Your second point–about not being treated like children–is the better one. That should be a given in any society, but clearly some societies do not agree.
Rather than a ‘right to transportation’, freedom to travel should be considered a right. Whether it’s going out for a walk unaccompanied or going abroad for university study without a mahram, there should be freedom of movement.
If you make transportation a right, then you have to figure out whether it’s everyone’s right to own a car, or maybe just a bicycle. A private jet? A public bus?