Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Times Online:

Iraq’s car drivers told to wear seatbelts or face a 30,000 dinar fine

Ali Younis, a Baghdad taxi driver, clips on the unfamiliar seatbelt before pulling into the street outside his house, where car bombs, kidnappings and sniper fire are an ever-present peril.

Fingering the dark strap with suspicion, Mr Younis said: “It feels weird to be wearing this thing, because we never had to in the past. What happens if I am caught in a bomb? It will take time to unclip myself. I have never seen anyone’s life being saved in Baghdad by a seatbelt.”

In a rare sign of normality amid the daily scenes of chaos on the roads of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, has ordered all drivers to wear a seatbelt. Failure will result in a fine of 30,000 Iraqi dinar (£13) - a day’s wage for a taxi driver like Mr Yunis. Militant traffic police have been out in force clamping down on motorists in Baghdad since Tuesday.

Lieutenant Kase Sadoon, dressed in his smart police officer’s uniform of navy blue trousers and white shirt topped off with a pair of mirrored sunglasses, carefully surveyed the cars, trucks and buses passing through the centre of the capital yesterday.

“Wearing seatbelts will limit the injuries that are caused in a traffic accident,” Lieutenant Sadoon, 35, told The Times. “It makes people feel as though things are getting back to normal. We are making progress step by step.”

Many drivers, however, fail to see the logic of worrying about their safety on the road when a bomb could go off at any minute. They also note that the countless checkpoints and blast walls around Baghdad in particular make it virtually impossible to travel fast enough to cause any damage even if you were to crash.

Hider Kamil, 57, a businessman, refuses to abide by the new law. He has already paid five bribes to policemen after being stopped. “I have been kidnapped twice in the past and feel that wearing a seatbelt will restrict my movement if something goes wrong again,” he said.

The number of cars in Iraq has trebled since the invasion five years ago as a flood of imports were snapped up by people who had been unable to own a new vehicle during the Saddam Hussein era because of regulations and expense.

Traffic soon clogged the streets, causing jams at rush hour. Accidents increased because no one obeyed the rules, with cars cutting across the central reservation, and driving the wrong way down roads or at roundabouts. Setting a bad example, US military convoys, Iraqi Government convoys and Iraqi security patrols also flout the traffic rules, speeding any way they wanted with sirens blaring and guns pointed.

Brigadier Zuhair Eyiada, the director general of the traffic police directorate in east Baghdad, said that the insecurity should not stop Iraqis from wearing a seatbelt, emphasising that this is one of the most fundamental traffic rules in the world. “In such critical circumstances you need to have a law for everything in order to solve problems starting from the minor issues to the more serious ones,” he said.

Looking around the streets of central Baghdad, most drivers were adhering to the new rule. However it does not yet apply to passengers - an anomaly that traffic police believe will change with time.

Mari Elias Hana, 31, an engineer, is happy to wear her seatbelt. She put it on when she first learnt to drive five years ago but was teased by her friends so decided to take it off until now. “We need to learn how to respect the law,” she said. Others, like Mr Yunis the taxi driver, only wear their seatbelt because they do not want to pay the fine. “The Government is always enforcing laws to make our life more difficult and earn them more money,” he said.

Firas Abdul Zahra, 51, a teacher, accused the authorities of shying away from tackling Iraq’s real problems. “Why do they force me to wear a seatbelt before they manage to provide me with a secure road?” he asked.

In an attempt to reduce congestion, the Prime Minister has also ordered drivers with even figures on their numberplates to use their car on alternate days of the week to those with an odd-numbered plate.