On last wednesday, my three year old son, met a road accident. He was getting off from his school bus when a speeding cab hit him just outside our apartment building in Sharjah.

That happened around 1215 hrs. I rushed from office to home as soon as I heard the news. My wife also reached home from clinic where she works.

My son’s left leg was hurt badly, as it was directly hit by the Sharjah Transport cab, with single spiral fracture, now his left leg is plastered from toes till mid thigh. The Plaster will be taken off on 06th May 2006. For next one month, he will mostly be on bed, which is hard for a three year old boy, specially when he also got another twin brother around.

BUT the main problem is, why that accident happened in first place?

When everyone in my family finally got out from the shock, I realize this last night. These cab drivers are given monthly monetary targets to meet, which, after converting on daily basis comes around AED 495. Which in city like Sharjah, is a lot for cab driver, due to these facts:

all commercial activities are concentrated in two three areas, so they usually don’t get long distance passengers.

most of the low income passengers still travel in shared cabs, which means more passengers in same amount of fare.

all the commercial districts face daily traffic jams during most of the working
hours, so cabs spend lots of the time either in waiting for customer or burning petrol,

If you take cab in sharjah and try to go either to Dubai or Ajman, then only the total fare will cross AED 25 mark, combine with traffic jams, its really nothing for a cab driver.

As in business of cabs, time is in true terms is equivalent to money, i.e. most passengers you will get in less time you will make more money out of it. Unfortunately, for Sharjah Transport cab driver, they can not make that much money on any given day. So, eventually they end up driving for longer hours in a day, The driver who hit my son, hasn’t slept for more than 20 hours at the time of accident, I cant blame him for that, its government authorities responsibility to control this issue and soften the monthly targets for drivers and to make mandatory a certain hours restriction for drivers to drive. But I doubt that little will be done in this regard as no matter its Dubai or Shrajah, most of the taxis on the roads are owned by the respective governments and who doesn’t like to make money, no matter it come from someone’s flesh gand blood.