The Qatar Blog: The Moorman's Experiences in Qatar

The traffic in this city is as bad as any place I've ever been, including New York, San Francisco, LA, Skopje Macedonia (horrendous), several cities in Mexico. The streets are jammed, there are an extraordinary number of highly aggessive drivers, and there is continuous construction. To add to all of this, there are the "round-abouts." In Europe these are often called traffic circles, and they take the place of traffic lights. Essentially traffic hits the round-about from four directions, with some basic rules of right away. You turn right into the circle, then drive around the circle until you come to the direction you want to take. So there are always four options; in order, right turn, straight ahead, turn left, u-turn. Cars coming from the other three direction may need to cut in front of you to make the turn they need. To the uninitiated, it looks like complete chaos. For experienced drivers, it's only chaos. A friend here says there is no sense of "lane integrity," so entering the circle, especially in heavy traffic, is a high risk sport.

I have not yet mangaged to get all the paperwork done to be eligible for a drivers license. That should happen within a week. It will be a mixed blessing; I really want the flexibility of being able to drive, but this is a scary place to be on the road.