Teamwork

While we were driving from Dibba to Umm Al Quwain on Sunday, we found ourselves on a narrow trucking road with only one lane going in either direction and the lanes separated by a construction barrier. About ten vehicles ahead, I could see that there was a semi-trailer truck that had stalled. Either it had overheated or run out of gas, but the point was that it obviously had a problem, there was nowhere for it to go, and we weren't going anywhere until it was moved. To add to the problem, the roundabout we had just come off of, was packed and traffic was quickly backing up.

Almost immediately, some guys in SUVs who were behind it, began pushing the construction fence into the other lane while others began signaling to the oncoming cars to drive on the shoulder. They pushed the barrier over enough to get a truck through to tow the stalled truck a few hundred feet so it was out of the way. While I was expecting a scene out of a Three Stooges movie, the whole process took about ten to fifteen minutes tops. The amazing thing to me was how quickly people were able to get together and get things taken care of. Things would go a lot more smoothly in the U.A.E. if more things worked like this.