Sample Essay On Car Drifting In Saudi Arabia

In Saudi Arabia, car drifting is very different from how people do it in the United States of America. Americans hold events and have car drifters do their stunts in an area that is safe for them and other people. Saudi Arabia is different because the people practice car drifting whenever they feel like it and on any roads, without caring whether they are narrow or broad. Proper car drifting requires the driver to have the vehicle at a very high speed in order to pull off an impressive act for their audience that often encompasses friends coming to clap and cheer. The problem with such drifting practices is that they mostly do them on public roads that other people use. That means the drifters put their lives and those of other road users in danger. Even people who are walking are in danger because drifting cars do not follow traffic rules and can go very wrong. Therefore, even if drifting is fun, it is a dangerous exercise for communities. However, because of the dangers of car drifting, the practice is now a hobby for many people in Saudi Arabia, especially the young generation who even record themselves when drifting. The people refer to car drifting as with tafheet, and it continues to be a widespread practice in Saudi Arabia. Obviously, people know the dangers of drifting but there are more videos and pictures uploaded to different websites to show that they continue making the same mistakes. Aside from the chances of causing accidents, drifters are always at risk since police officers would arrest any person who breaks the law, even on the road. To protect themselves from the law, most drifters only operate their stunts using nicknames and sometimes, they carry machine guns in the car to shoot anybody who tries to arrest them. The used cars are also not always the property of the drifter. Those who cannot buy a car or do not want to damage the one they have will choose to steal one and drift carelessly. Apparently, drifting is a crime in Saudi Arabia and is punishable by law. Nevertheless, that does not mean the people stop the practice and in most cases they end up injured, dead, or killing other people.
The Saudi Arabia government needs to deal with the problem of car drifting in the country before more people die from the practice. The involved methods are not safe, and even the people who claim to be professional drifters cannot control the road or predict the results of their drifting. For example, on December 8, 2012, Marouf Hussain reported the death of a drifter in his article “‘Saudi drifting’ teen killed after crashing into truck”. According to Hussain, an eighteen-year-old driver died after failing to drift a car on a busy public road. There are significant factors that one needs to concentrate on from Hussain’s information; the driver was a teenager, and the drifting was taking place on a public road. That is proof of the dangers that car drifters face every time they perform the act. However, as mentioned before, road drifters never learn and more videos and pictures of car drifting continue to emerge. One picture shows drifters changing two car tires while another drifter continues to drive the car on the remaining tires (Lynton). Evidently, an accident can happen at any point of the drifting, making it impossible for anybody to come up with methods of preventing the accident. Especially, when the drivers swerve the cars back and forth to get one side up in the air, they do not only endanger themselves but everybody else within reach.
Expectedly, Saudi Arabia has the worst statistics of road accidents in the world. As per the records provided by the Kingdom’s General Directorate of Traffic, in 2010, 17 people in my home country die every day because of road accidents (Joffe-Walt). The study went on to report that because of an estimated 485,000 accidents in Saudi Arabia, 6485 people died and 36,000 others sustained injuries between 2008 and 2009 (Joffe-Walt). If one considers the statistics and applies them to determine the death toll of two decades, then there will be over 4 million traffic accidents, and they will result in 86000 deaths. Expectedly, the number of the injured is equally high, and that can only mean that many of the Saudi Arabia citizens have to live disabled lives in cases of severe injuries (Joffe-Walt). The given data should be a wake-up call for everybody that practices such dangerous activities. Particularly in Saudi Arabia, people should not view the videos and pictures that show successful car drifts alone, they should consider the failed attempts as well. When that does not help, the government should step in and impose laws that protect its people, especially the innocent bystanders who are face similar danger.
Therefore, the important question is, what can the government do to ensure a slow but effective mitigation of car drifting in the future? Obviously, legislation is the best way to go because above everything else law enforcement is the only common factor between drifters and the rest of Saudi Arabia. In other words, the government has to outlaw any form of car drifting regardless of the venue and the persons involved. Adam Lynton reports that car drifting in the Kingdom has become a criminal offense instead of a traffic violation. Consequently, when a person has no previous charges of car drifting, they are to pay a fine of 2500 dollars and lose their driving rights for a month (Lynton). A second violation will warrant the confiscation of their car and driving license for three months, the fine increases to 5000 dollars and a jail term of a year (Lynton). At a third violation, the government has a right to impound the car of the offender for one to five years while they pay a fine of 10,000 dollars (Lynton). The legislation also considers the accomplices of car drifting, meaning that even if a person does not take the wheel, being in a drifted car warrants the punishment. Nonetheless, passive participants face a fine of between 400 and 1,500 dollars (Tawalbeh). Such measures do not necessarily mean that the people will stop car drifting; on the contrary, tafheet is the second most popular sport in the Kingdom after football (Alammar). Hence, despite the legislation enumerated before, car drifters continue to upload videos of their stunts with the only difference being that they now cover their faces for anonymity.
Conclusively, Saudi Arabia needs a new solution to the menace of car drifting on public roads because imposing laws against the practice appears to be ineffective. On that note, the government is obviously overlooking a common factor in all the videos and pictures of car drifting, and that is the spectators. In every video, the drifters appear to be showing off for the benefit of whoever is holding the cameras and in some cases, a bigger crowd of onlookers. Based on the analysis given above, it appears that Alammar is right when he refers to car drifting as a “dangerous culture” because of its recognition in the whole Kingdom. Therefore, it appears that the only way effective way of getting rid of car drifting would be targeting the public. In other words, without people to watch car drifters will not be motivated to do the dangerous stunts. Hence, rather than imposing laws against car drifting, the Kingdom should consider banning such videos and even arresting onlookers alongside the car drifters. That will kill the culture fast.

Work Cited

Alammar, Ibraheem. The dangerous culture of drifting in Kingdom. Arab News Online, 2014. N.p. http://www.arabnews.com/news/654081
Houssain, Marouf. "Saudi drifting" teen killed after crashing into truck. Drive Arabia Online, 2012. N.p. http://www.drivearabia.com/news/2012/12/08/teen-killed-in-saudi-arabia- after-crashing-into-truck-ksa/
Joffe-Walt, Benjamin. Saudi Arabia has the Highest Road Accident Death Toll in the World. Green Prophet Online, 2010. Web. http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/03/saudi-arabia- death-toll-driving/
Lynton, Adam. Drifting Banned in Saudi Arabia as More and More Die. Car Buzz Online. N.p. http://carbuzz.com/news/2014/1/8/Drifting-Banned-in-Saudi-Arabia-as-More-and-More- Die-7718003/
Tawalbeh, Khalid. Get the drift: 5 years, SR40,000 fine await you. Arab News Online, 2014. Web. http://www.arabnews.com/news/505021