Off Beat News

If you haven’t heard yet, there is now a federal law in the United Arab Emirates to actually enforce the black points system, whereby drivers get black points for various offences. Once a guy collects 24 black points, the licence will be suspended for three months. If he collects 24 points for the second time, the license will be suspended for six months. If it happens for the third time, the licence will be taken away for one year and will not be returned after that until the guy passes a training course from an officially-recognised driving institute.

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So my PR guy called up Porsche and asked if we could get any Porsche model for our usual test-drive period, which is typically over several days. The Porsche people fired back that their test drive policy is the same for the media as it is for the public. So if you have some kind of undying love for these cars and want to abuse one, read on.

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Gulf News reported that Dubai police fined as many as 50 of their own employees for having dark tint on their personal cars that is above the legal tint level. By law, the tint should have 30% “darkness” at most, but cops themselves were freely flouting the law, so this is a good decision by higher police officials, emphasising that they should act as role models.

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Not quite. But Dubai has an unusually large population of Bugatti Veyrons, as published in a press-release-style article in Emirates Business newspaper. Out of 125 Veyrons delivered to customers worldwide, Dubai alone has 15. While the article simply mentions numbers, a simple calculation reveals that tiny Dubai has a massive 12% of the world’s Veyrons. Maybe a few of them will show up at the PrivatDrive Supercar Show in Abu Dhabi. Read on for more details about the show.

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Speeding in Abu Dhabi may lead to jail-time and confiscation of vehicles as the Traffic and Patrol Division of the AD Police is apparently cracking down on reckless drivers. Warning that strict measures have been put in place to arrest such motorists, the police said some of the drivers go up to dangerous speeds of 200 kph. But more importantly, those caught driving dangerously will now have to spend one day cleaning the roads and another day cleaning a school. They will also spend one week in prison.

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The capital of Saudi Arabia will be hosting the Riyadh Motor Show 2007, from the 9th to the 13th of December, at the Riyadh Exhibition Centre. While we expect no women in skimpy clothes on the stands, we don’t expect any women drivers to be there either. However, this reminded us of this year’s Dubai Motorshow, and thought we’d publish some numbers about the most expensive cars shown there.

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According to an article in Gulf News, plain-clothes RTA officials have been going around Dubai fining people for simply sharing a car to get to the office. Basically, even if they see you picking up your buddy on the side of the road, you could be slapped with a Dhs 5000 fine. And I can bet you they are probably targetting people with economy cars. Like the trusty old Toyota Corolla that my family owns.

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So I was hanging with my buddy as he was trying to catch a taxi. He being a brown person, expectedly around 10 empty taxis passed by without slowing down because, as everyone knows, most of these racist drivers only stop for white people and tourists, in anticipation of a big tip. I became pissed off after 45 minutes, and lightly slapped on a speeding Toyota Camry taxi with my hand. The taxi hit the brakes, turned around, and a big beefy Pathan driver got ready to fight with me.

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I am currently being bombarded by press releases from carmakers touting their Something-Of-The-Year awards handed to them at a glittering ceremony by CAR Middle East magazine. And I am trashing them as soon as I receive them.

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In a hilarious turn of events, a 2003 Hummer H2 was beaten by a 1921 Ford Model T Speedster at a road-going hill-climb event in America.

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