UAE's ‘need-for-speed’ outlaws pull stunts

Motorists in the UAE in two separate incidents attempted to circumvent anti-speeding laws and measures on the roads.

In the first incident, a traffic sign showing the speed limit on the Al Uraibi Road in Ras Al Khaimah was vandalized.

An unidentified miscreant assed the number ‘1’ beside the speed limit which was shown as 60km per hour, showing the sign to read 160km per hour.

In the second incident, a speeding driver coming to the UAE from a nearby Gulf country managed to avert scores of police cameras by partially hiding his plate number with a sticker.

Once he was in Dubai, he was caught by the traffic police.

Dubai’s police commander Lt General Dahi Khalfan Tamim quickly commended the traffic police patrol which seized the 26-year-old man this week and said he would be prosecuted for committing such a crime.

The traffic police were on a routine patrol task on Jumeira Road when they noticed that one number of a car plates is concealed by a sticker.

When they stopped the car, its driver from a Gulf country told them he had done so just after entering the UAE to evade police speed cameras.

“This man had committed a grave mistake, which is classified as a criminal act because if, for example, he was involved in an accident and fled, how can he be identified or located,” said Brigadier Khalil Al Mansoori, director of the Department of criminal investigation in Dubai.

He said the unnamed driver, who was arrested on Friday, would be presented to the prosecutor while his car had been seized.

“He confessed that he came from his country with a sticker…once he was inside the UAE, he stuck it on the first number of both the front and rear plates of his car in order to avoid being caught by the speed camera…this is a crime.”

Last year, traffic police in Abu Dhabi seized several Saudi drivers for smudging their car plates to avert speed cameras just after they crossed the border.

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