For the second time in less than a week, I stepped out of my house this morning to find police and ambulance crews sorting out the carnage of a serious smash up. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so surprised to find another grave accident on my doorstep if I lived on Airport Road or Salam Street, or one of the other main routes out of the city. But the site of this collision was the seemingly innocuous intersection of a quiet street that crosses an even quieter street in the middle of Khalifa City A.

Many residents say that the absence of traffic is one of the main reasons they like living off the island. But the streets of Khalifa A are deceptively dangerous.

To begin with, the streets themselves are in some ways more hazardous than those in town. Most have no pavements and there’s very little landscaping in the public areas of Khalifa City. Without these barriers, the streets are lined with sand, mud, and gravel that often slides into the traffic lane, leaving the pavement less able to provide traction in the event of a sudden swerve.

Now, anyone who’s driven in Khalifa City knows that the sudden swerve is a way of life. Between the garbage bins that are often placed actually in the roadway and the many pedestrians who have nowhere else to walk but dangerously close to passing traffic, drivers regularly have to weave from their designated lane to the middle of the road and back. This weaving coupled with the sand-slippery streets makes for dangerous driving conditions.

The lack of traffic in the area is, ironically, another factor contributing to the risk of driving off the island. The perception that there’s no one else on the roads has lured more than one Khalifa City driver to blow through an intersection or screech around a round-about without looking properly for oncoming traffic.

Perhaps the greatest contributor to the danger on the mainland streets, though, is the absence of speed cameras. It’s true that I’ve only ever seen one posted speed limit—60kph on the road running alongside Al Raha Gardens, a road I’ve seen drivers cruise at over 120kph. Just because you probably won’t get caught doesn’t mean the speed limit is “as fast as your car will go”. The posted speed limit in most residential areas of the capital is 60kph, but surely a responsible driver doesn’t need a signpost to understand the basic logic behind limiting one’s speed?

While there are many advantages to living on the mainland, anyone living or visiting Khalifa City would be well advised to slow down and keep their eyes open—it’s a lot more perilous than it looks.

Laura Fulton