127-car Pileup

A few people have indicated that I obsess with driving and cars here. It's hard to ignore the safety risks. It's even gotten to the point where visiting friends will make casual remarks of all the near accidents that I avoid while driving and I don't have any idea what they're talking about.

Yesterday on the main road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai (the green arrow indicates the approximate place) there was an accident involving 127 cars that was due to foggy conditions and drivers driving at excessive speeds. (Note, I previously mentioned that the accident was a 95 car pile up. At the time I wrote it, the article that I used said 95 cars. Thank you to Mutsumi for sending me a link to an updated article.) Another article in lists major accidents in the past several years. This article lists the major causalities of the accident.

This isn't the first time this has happened. A similar accident happened in the same area in March of 2008 which involved 60 cars, 3 deaths, and 350 injured (see here about halfway down). Both cases were due to excessive speeding in foggy conditions. The print version of the National (I can't find the article in the online version) blames yesterday's pileup on one driver who was traveling 140 km per hour (about 85 mph) with a visibility of 50 meters.

Thankfully, not as many people were hurt as the accident three years ago. However, this is sure to put a damper on the Abu Dhabi Transit Authority's zero road fatality policy for 2011.