Thursday 27 april 2006
Things that go bump in the night

Mohssen Arishie
Gazette staff

Road safety experts have come up with an interesting explanation for bumps in the road. They say that poor construction techniques and substandard materials are to blame.
The experts' explanation challenges the old theory that the bumps in the road are constructed by residents in densely populated areas to force reckless drivers to slow down.
The residents stress that they're fed up of fatal accidents occurring just a few feet from their front doors and that's why they construct these huge speed bumps. It's the safety of their young children that they're really worried about. The sleeping policemen are particularly dangerous at night.
"Drivers sometimes seem to be riding rockets," says one citizen who lives very close to a highway on the outskirts of the capital. "They drive like meteors, threatening the lives of our children and wives, who have to cross the main roads several times every day. It's like Russian roulette for them."
A recent survey estimates the number of sleeping policemen constructed by residents in Cairo alone at 1,760, claiming that these speed bumps were responsible for no fewer than 20 per cent of the capital's fatal road accidents last year.
Brigadier Ahmed Assem, Director of Media and Public Relations for Cairo Traffic Police, has appealed to local residents to stop making these death traps, adding that Local Council bulldozers have already demolished 60 per cent of them.
While the new theory has exonerated residents from taking all the blame, civil engineers attribute the incessant growth in the bumps to laxity in enforcing the Traffic Law and the Road Building Code.
Pointing the finger at Local Council officials, Dr Mohamed Abdel-Baki Ibrahim, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, agrees.
A discontented Ibrahim told the press that governmental agencies and ministries are to blame for constructing sleeping policemen outside their buildings. "They're setting a bad example, encouraging members of the public to do the same," he said.
However, rather than calling on concerned officials to eliminate randomly constructed bumps, the Professor advised civil engineers to come up with a tourist-friendly sleeping policeman which would be applied uniformly all over the country.
Road safety experts warn that the bumps can seriously damage vehicles. Taking into account the fact that at least 50 per cent of the cars on the streets of Cairo are nearly as old as Mafeking, the damage can be the kiss of death for many vehicles.
Abdalla Abdel-Aziz, Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, told Al-Ahrar newspaper that the new cars rolling off production lines in Asian countries are ill equipped to cope with speed bumps.
"These new models are so low that they almost touch the road. A speeding car can be written off if it hits a sleeping policeman at high speed," he explained.

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