For nearly two weeks, the road users in the Sultanate of Oman were subject to unprecedented traffic woes on the main artery roads - Sultan Qaboos Street and the Qurum Heights, due to the closure of one side of the Mountain Road for maintenance.
As the outbound traffic from Al Amerat via Wadi Adei road piled up on these two roads, minor or even major accidents became a regular affair as motorists to reach their offices on time, overlooked the basic rules such as using indicators or maintaining safe distances.
The lack of safe distance between two vehicles often leads to sudden surges in minor mishaps with owners of the two or more affected vehicles indulging in arguments in an attempt to determine who was at fault.
"What actually used to happen is that such minor or major incidents that take place due to not following simple traffic rules often aggravate the already chaotic traffic situation, causing further delays to workplaces in the morning rush hours," said Majid al Balushi, who had to leave for work an hour early and still get delayed.
According to the Royal Oman Police, "Rear collision accidents are mainly caused by failure to adhere to the safety distance. Leave enough distance between your vehicle and the vehicle in front of you to avoid any sudden collision. It is considered a violation of any driver who does not leave a safe distance while following a course.”
Speaking to the Observer, an ROP official said, "We understand that people are in a hurry and frustrated during peak hours, that they tend to ignore some basic rules, which do not help anyway because damages to the vehicle can be significant, even if there is no human casualty."
Traffic problems in the morning eased when the authorities opened the Mountain Road partially for a few hours in the morning. "But those two to three weeks really put the temperament and resilience of motorists to test because one could see some of them taking chances with simple rules, and compounding the hardships," Ramesh Sharma, a resident of Al Amerat, said.
Eyewitnesses told the Observer that rear collisions have become common only when motorists do not follow the rules of keeping a safe distance or using indicators while changing lanes in haste.
Apart from the use of mobile phones or responding to messages while driving that distracts the driver from watching what is happening on the road, the other violation is overtaking when there are two parallel connected lines because it poses a great danger to road users.
It may be noted that collisions between vehicles and crashing against fixed objects are seen as the major cause of accidents in the Sultanate, according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
There were 76,200 traffic accidents in 2022, including 60,900 minor accidents.
As per the Traffic Law of 2018, penalties for commonly detected offenses are not adhering to the correct path at the traffic lights RO 15, 1 black point, abandoning a vehicle on either side of the road – RO 15, exceeding the maximum speeds can lead to fines between RO 50 and RO 10 and up to three black points.
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