Your “Calm Before The Storm” Saturday Evening Post

I wrote the following to amuse myself and my colleagues when I was ensconced at (deployed to) the Hilton Kuwait Resort back in 2008-09 and didn’t have much to do because there was no reasonably priced booze available (a fifth of Johnny Walker Black Label was $150 on the black market) and Matt Cassel was the P*ts QB and we missed the playoffs in that 11-5 season. I drove from the Hilton to Camp Arifjan and back on a daily basis, and saw some crazy shit. Driving in the Middle East/Central Asia (I’ve done Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and Kuwait) is the motoring equivalent of an out-of-body experience. I had a 375 HP Holden Caprice LTZ (Australian Chevy built exclusively for the ME market) as my leased vehicle during my seven months there and so could hang in traffic. It only got 12 mpg, but subsidized gasoline cost only 85 cents a gallon so who fucking cared. Anyway, after we kicked Saddam out of Kuwait in ’91, they built a bad-ass highway system, but no one who lives there understands how to drive. Hope you find this amusing:

I get the opportunity to see a lot of stupid road tricks when I am out and about on the highways of Kuwait. Many of these will be familiar to stateside drivers; the problem here is that the TRUE idiot drivers (comprising maybe 1 or 2% of the population on the road like back home) make up at least 40% of people behind the wheel here. This is what happens when you go from riding camels to driving Ferraris in a generation-and-a-half.

120-to-30 kph Brake Check – You’re tooling along at the speed limit in the center lane, and you notice a bus entering the freeway from the on-ramp with several vehicles behind it anxiously waiting to get out and around it. The bus merges in to the right lane, and the vehicles behind it (usually Mitsubishi flatbeds or cube trucks, or possibly a Toyota Echo or other similar seriously underpowered shitbox) immediately cuts over into your lane so he can accelerate by the bus in excruciatingly slow fashion. You usually can’t get over to the left because that lane is full of vehicles blasting by you at 160-180 kph. Jam on the brakes, curse.

Rumble-Strip Boogie – on the freeway, when all the regular traffic lanes slow to a crawl due to an accident or some other hazard up ahead, there are those who are in too big a rush to creep along with the hoi-polloi. These folks move over into the breakdown lanes to the right and left, and tool along at regular highway speed (120 kph/75mph) or faster. Travelling at high speed across the rather-significant rumble strips, drivers are known to lose control of their vehicle and veer, at high speed, into the crawling lanes (or into the concrete median barriers, THEN into the traffic). Much mayhem and carnage ensue. Best to stay in the center lane in traffic jams.

Three-Lane Hussein – Back home we call this move The Three-Lane Jane. Someone will blast by you in the left lane at 90 or 100 mph, then jam on their brakes and cut across three lanes of traffic in order to make that exit at the last second. This move results in a lot of wrecks.

Full Court Left – Happens at traffic lights. Guy in the far right lane decides, while waiting at the red, that he needs to make a left. As soon as the light turns green, he makes that left, in front of three or four lanes of traffic. Turn signal optional. Not as dangerous as some moves because everyone else is just taking off so he usually gets away with it without being involved in a collision.

Miraculous Three-into-One Right Turn – I see this all day every day. There’s a right turn coming up that a lot of cars take. But the lane is not really full or backed up. Why not? Because everybody maintains their position in the center or left lane as they approach the intersection. Then, at the very last moment, they all veer over into the right lane in order to make that right turn. Lots of cut-offs and force-ins. Some wrecks result, but mostly it just pisses you off.

Static Display – mostly observed in town after dark, but also observed on the freeway. Vehicle comes to a complete stop in (usually) the right lane. Oftentimes in front of a store or restaurant, while the driver runs in to pick up his prescription or take-out dinner. Hazard flashers are sometimes engaged, but usually only the parking lights are used, so the best bet at night is to stay to the center or left lane. Occasionally you see Static Displays accordioned or pancaked when the drivers of buses, water trucks, or cement mixers (all of which normally inhabit the right lane) are not paying particular attention. Leaving Projectile Child and Disposable Wife (see below) in the vehicle while you run in is an option.

Projectile Child – Observe the passengers in other vehicles as you drive down the highway and it won’t take more than three vehicles before you see a totally unrestrained kid crawling around the interior of a car or sitting on the console. Also detectable by the presence of a “Baby on Board” sticker in the rear window.

Disposable Wife – basically the same as Projectile Child, primarily seen in the passenger seat but occasionally observed leaning over into the rear seat to change a diaper.
Projectile Child and/or Disposable Wife are usually seen, for some reason, in:

The Surface-Level Kuwaiti Scud – A vehicle, usually a large SUV but often a full-size Euro or Japanese luxury sedan or the ubiquitous Crown Victoria/Chevy Caprice, that can be observed travelling at 40-50 mph faster than traffic conditions or good sense would normally dictate.

White Line Fever (aka No Peripheral Vision Shuffle) – the tendency to straddle the white line separating highway lanes. This is usually seen being performed by niqab-wearing Muslim woman (only eyes exposed). Imagine trying to drive down the highway at 75 or 80 mph while trying to see where you are going through the letter-slot in your front door.