I’m in the market for a car. It’s hard to not be for one here in the UAE. Driving is a necessary evil here, after all.

I’ve been driving a Toyota Yaris rental for a few months now at the expense of roughly Dh2,000 a month (about $600) that includes insurance and servicing, but no amount of money is worth the emasculation of my manhood by driving that car.

So, as i venture out into the role of “new car buyer”, I look at my options. In the UAE, there’s a greater prevalence of people driving luxury-models – the Mercedes-Benz’s, BMW’s, Lexus’s, etc. – than any other place I’ve been to. Oil money spurs desire, I suppose. A 4-5 year loan is manageable with rates hovering around 4%, even though I don’t really plan on staying here that long and I’ll likely provide a decent down-payment.

That said, the amount of those cars swerving around me has fueled my interest in becoming a luxury driver myself. As I keep telling myself, I doubt there’ll be any other time in my life I’ll be able to afford such wheels.And with so many people leaving the Emirates for personal and professional reasons, there is no other time to buy a car in the UAE.

So, a Beemer-huntin’ I go. I’ve seen a few and I’m in no real rush to buy one. Initially, I’ve focused my search within Abu Dhabi, given that it is quite a headache to “export” your car from another emirate state within a two-day window and “import” it back into my hometown for approximately Dh300 ($100).

The first car, a 2004 BMW 530i, seriously tested my patience. Not just because I really wanted it as soon as I started driving it, but it was the aggressive nature of the Egyptian man selling it to me. He initially offered Dh73,000 (About $22,000) but was willing to go down to Dh70,000 if I paid all in cash. After I drove it, I waited a week before calling him again and asked to see it again. A paraphrase of the conversation:

Me: Hi, I’d like to see the car again, if it’s still available.

Him: You want to buy the car?

Me: No, I just want to test-drive it again. I haven’t made up my mind.

Him: Why have you not made up your mind? You don’t like it?

Me: I haven’t said that. I just want to see it again.

Him: OK. But you have to put a deposit of Dh1,000 to drive it again.

Me (stunned): Huh? Why? I just want to see it

Him: You drive it very hard last time. You pushed on the brakes too much.

Me: But how else can I test the brakes? I even made sure you knew what I was doing when I did it.

Him: I take very good care of my car. You have to trust me. If you don’t want to pay deposit, you will not drive car.

Me *stunned): Um, alright. Good luck selling it.

And that was that. I’ve since read that putting a deposit to test drive a car over here, but it’s borderline insulting to me to be forced to do that. I’m a good, honest driver with a clean driving record in the 10-plus years I’ve on the road, and I’m certainly not going to be forced to pay in good faith something which I feel is quite unnecessary, especially after test driving it once already.

In any case, I decided to expand my search and look to Dubai, knowing full well that I’ll have a little headache transferring it over here, I found a couple BMW’s for decent prices, including one formerly owned by Sheikh Mansour – the so-called “Rainbow Sheikh” – a member of the ruling party whose car collection has endeared him to the local media.

Anyways, this car was listed for Dh50,000 ($15,000), a great price for a 2003 BMW 530i with only 75,000 km on it. Unfortunately, the Californian who is selling it thought he typed Dh65,000 instead. I’m planning on seeing it later this week, but needless to say, I’m still willing to hold out until I find the right car out there.

Then there was this beauty (site is now taken down): a 2006 BMW with only 10,000 driven on it, offered for Dh40,000. i e-mailed the owner and got this reply:

Hello,
I am from London, United Kingdom.
I have a work contract in Dubai and I need a car so I bought it.
I must sell because I moved back to the UK and it is quite difficult to drive a European car with the steering wheel on the left. The car is now in London in excellent condition, no accidents, no scratches, no dents, no need for additional repairs and have all the necessary documents for sale.
It is guarded by a car garage, maintened well. The final price is 40.000 AED including shipping and insurance. I agree to give you a few days for the test. The car comes with a rating of own history and numbers. Is being recorded in Dubai this would be no problem to cancel the recording and turn on you. I spoke with one of my friends in Dubai and he said there was no need for me to come down to close the case in person because there are many companies that can handle these situations. So I made a bit of research work and have found a local company. I asked how much it will cost for such a transaction and they indicated to me to offer the delivery address (so they can calculate shipping costs). In case you’re still interested please let me know the address where you want it to be delivered so the company can calculate the cost.
Thank you.

So, the car isn’t actually in Dubai and I have to trust that the car is indeed in pristine condition before agreeing to transfer the funds over so it can get shipped over to me. Oh, and there’s no phone number to talk the car over on the phone. The scam siren went off in my head shortly after reading that, so I won’t be suckered into that one.

The search continues…

Much ink has been spilled over the news that Abu Dhabi being awarded the headquarters for the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), and rightfully so. The new organization will be yet another mark on the world map for the emirate. But how will it change the country’s attitude towards actually embracing a “green” lifestyle?

I admit I was skeptical of its chances after it was announced that Abu Dhabi was actively pursuing the headquarters. For one, it was vying for Irena against Germany, a country in which I was regaled with many tales of its environmental stewardship during my time pursuing an environmental engineering degree. Secondly, aside from its lofty aspirations of building Masdar City, a planned carbon-neutral city and the “most ambitious sustainable development in the world today”, Abu Dhabi is known primarily as an oil exporter and less so as a “green” hub.

Diplomatic lobbying and logical reasoning certainly helped secure Irena in the UAE, the first major UN affiliated organization that will be headquartered in the Arab world. And while it is important that Abu Dhabi makes a conscious push towards becoming an environmental sustainable hub, it’s hard to see much progress happening right now.

Coming from a country which pioneered recycling, it always distresses me to keep throwing out recyclable materials because there are no proper disposal bins around. In fact, there has not been much of a word of a new recycling bins since they were announced this past March. The only true recycling depot in the city is apparently at Spinney’s, a supermarket which caters to the western expatriate crowd.

I haven’t taken much public transportation, and while the bus system is doing well and everyone is looking forward to Dubai’s upcoming metro lines, the UAE is firmly a car culture. The country is not pedestrian-friendly, always having to dodge speeding and undisciplined cars, and the idea of covering the city in bike lanes is instantly dismissed given the soaring temperatures.

Water usage and bottled imports remains high, largely in part due to our proximity to the desert, and the rising cost of desalinating sea water. And the tap water is said to be harmful, at least to one’s scalp, evidenced by the amount of brand-name shampoo bottles at a local supermarket which are said to “prevent the loss of hair from falling out”. Don’t even get me started on McDonald’s, which seems to use the reminants of styrofoam packaging in their meals decades since it went out of style back in North America.

The result is a hazy, un-green lifestyle which it appears everyone living here has become resigned to. It is an unfortunate situation. But, like everything I’ve seen here, there is long-term hope, which I’ve mentioned above. Public and educational campaigns should be the norm, never mind the Heroes of the UAE campaign which I don’t feel drives the message home enough. Back home, a mix of scare tactics and economic realities helped persuade the public that environmental conservation is the right way to go.

It’s too bad that it might take the landing of a prestigious international energy organization to possibly open the eyes of a nation towards a true environmental attitude shift. But, if it truly is the catalyst for change, well, all the better. Just as long as I can find a green bin to recycle my paper, glassware and plastics in.

If there’s one major gripe I can share during my brief tenure here in the United Arab Emirates, it’s that driving in the country is one of the most horrible and dangerous experiences I have ever had.

I can’t really say that I’m a prolific driver, which makes my unscientific assumption all the more unreliable, as the only thing I can really compare driving here to is the mean streets of Montreal. Its lassez faire attitude, single lane-ways and unmarked road lines makes driving there uncomfortable, slightly stressful but tolerable.

It’s a different story here in the UAE. While I admit I’m a pretty cautious and courteous driver, I can’t say the same for my counterparts on the road. Every time I venture out onto the road, it’s the same scenario – speeding trucks, taxis which never signal while changing lanes and countless SUV’s who liberally use high-beams, horns, and natural intimidation to literally force you to get out of their lane. Pedestrian right-of-way is a completely foreign concept here, making each trip across the street a highly risky real-life version of Frogger. My colleague, Jen Gerson, shares her own thoughts in a recent blog post.

Not only is it dangerous, but in a way, it’s commonly accepted that drivers here have an arrogant, if not unwieldy power while on the roads. While the reasons behind its prevalence could be a cultural issue, I also believe a large part of the community, notably Indian and Pakistani expatriates who make up a significant part of the driving population, have not received the same safety training programs that we have in North America. Instead of rigorous training sessions with one-on-one training, it often feels that people just grab a set of car keys and just learn “on the road”.

It is no surprise, then, that the UN’s World Health Organization have labelled UAE’s roads as some of the most dangerous in the world:

[The WHO used] 2007 figures to calculate that they account for 37.1 deaths for every 100,000 residents.

According to figures gathered by police in the UAE, there were 2,138 pedestrian/vehicle accidents in 2008 compared with 2,022 the year before. The high number of pedestrian fatalities contributes to the UAE’s high overall traffic death toll – 1,071 in 2008, up from 1,056 in 2007.

There were 26 pedestrians killed in Abu Dhabi during the first two and a half months of this year; 24 people died crossing roads in Dubai during the same period. There were 754 pedestrian/vehicle accidents in Dubai last year, compared with 665 the year before. Last year 663 pedestrians in Abu Dhabi were struck by cars, up from 583 in 2007.

To highlight the problem, The National (my employer), has begun a road safety campaign, a noble approach in attempting to fix this major problem. I have no inside information to what will be published, but I do get the impression this issue will be pushed very hard in the foreseeable future.

Will it fix the problem? I don’t know, although I hope it makes a big impression on the local community. However, I really hope one of the results of the campaign is pushing road safety education so every driver here follows the law, regardless of how fast you need to get to your destination.

Because, as the old cliche goes, one child’s death caused by reckless driving is one death too many.