I take a cab to work every day. We go along the Sailia down to 70 meter rd. (sabaeen to the locals) and then to Medina Hadda where I work. The saila is roughly 4 and a half lanes wide for most of it outside of old Sana’a. Not that there’s any lanes, even if there were lines painted on the road, they would be ignored…
Anyway, on the way to work, we came up on a slightly slower moving car. My driver honked, as is the custom, as he passed on the left. I noticed that the driver of the other car wasn’t paying attention and was slowly drifting to the left, into us. Sure enough, he smacked into the rear passenger side of the taxi I was in. We had been going about 45 MPH, so we fishtailed a bit. It wasn’t that bad, although we were coming up on one of the many overpasses and the thought of us running into the supports flashed through my mind. Anyway, the impact messed up my cab’s fender, but it totally ripped off the cowling and all of the plastic bits on the front of the other car. My driver got out and started yelling at the other guy. He came back long enough to tell me to get another cab…
My next guy was funny. He told me over and over again that he wasn’t crazy like everyone else because he didn’t chew qat and smoke. He seemed to take pride in his safe driving. It was quite a relief. This was the 4th accident that i have been involved in since I got here and it had the most potential for being dangerous. I have driven in the US for about 22 years and have been involved in 4 accidents despite there being many more cars and much faster traffic in the US. Traffic here is nuts, I’ve never been so worried being in a car before…