So Josh was involved in our inaugural middle eastern car accident. We’ve had plenty of near misses, but up until now we had gotten through unscathed. Unfortunately, our rental car is now a little bit “scathed.”
One of the problems with driving in Oman is there are traffic laws that people generally follow, but there are a lot of bad drivers here and plenty of people who are impatient and think the rules don’t apply to them. So you’ll be driving along and all of a sudden someone will pull out to make a left turn and stop right in front of you. Like the big truck that we were sitting behind, waiting to make a left turn onto the freeway. The way was clear at first, but the truck driver sat for about 30 seconds, waited until the oncoming car was about 20 yards away and then decided to turn left right in front of it. Go figure.
So Josh is in the grocery store parking lot, meeting the guy who was going to adjust our satellite dish, when a guy in a Lexus tries to squeeze behind him and smacks into the back end of the rental car. Other driver hops out of the car and wants to pay cash for the damage, but since it’s a rental car there are paperwork issues involved, but the guy didn’t want to wait for the embassy representative or the police so Josh got his info and dude took off.
Long story short, Josh spent the entire afternoon doing paperwork and working with the rental company getting the estimate for the repair and then the rental company had the other driver come down to the body shop, they haggled over the cost of the repair and then the dude went to the ATM, withdrew the cash and paid for the damage. It was a headache, but at least Josh got to speak Arabic to the Omanis at the rental car agency and at the Nissan dealership all afternoon.
As a funny aside, Josh and a guy from the rental agency had to follow the Lexus guy to the ATM and he proved over and over again what a bad driver he was: speeding, weaving in and out of other cars, etc. It was clear to the guy riding with Josh that the other guy caused the accident and wasn’t worried about causing another one. They also suspect that he didn’t have insurance because he was insistent on paying cash and not getting the cops or the insurance company involved.
After getting that car drama solved, the next day Josh was able to pick up our car from the embassy. When they got home, Carter walked in the house and announced, “We almost got in a crash on the way home.” Josh was driving along at 45 mph and a chick in a tiny car full of women slowly pulled out of a shopping center parking lot right into his lane and he would have munched her if the lane next to him hadn’t been open. Thankfully for her and her passengers he was able to swerve into the open lane and miss her. He says he doesn’t know if she even noticed that she was almost crushed by a much bigger car.
In Egypt the drivers were much more skilled and confident. There were no rules to follow other than the unwritten rule of “if my bumper is ahead of yours I have the right of way,” but the majority of people drove confidently, aggressively, and attentively. It made for a finely choreographed dance that seemed to work more often than not, especially since everyone moved at half the speed in much less powerful cars. Here everyone drives new, fast cars, they like to speed, and they don’t pay attention. Not a great combination.