The new traffic law, which the government hoped would end chaos on Egypt's roads, has been delayed, reports Reem Leila Egypt's traffic problems are a microcosm of larger dilemmas afflicting society, at least in as much as they involve the government, drivers, pedestrians and law enforcement agencies. The traffic draft law, approved by the Shura Council, was due to be discussed this week by the defence and national security and the transportation committees of the People's Assembly (PA). The discussion has now been delayed until an unspecified date: the reason, say officials, is to give the Ministry of Interior a chance to amend articles in the new law. "It is long and includes many clauses," says head of the PA Transportation Committee Hamdi El-Tahan, "it will probably take a long time before it is approved by the PA. It needs to be redrafted as many articles are inconsistent with one another." MP Gamal Zahran argues that the government is incapable of tackling the country's traffic problems. It has failed to devise a coherent infrastructure, he says, so any talk of regulating the traffic that uses it is premature. Road signs, traffic lights, lane markers and sidewalks are all in a state of disarray, he says, while traffic officers are notoriously corrupt. "They enforce existing legislation according to whim while drivers are left to guess if it is illegal to park on this side of the road, where there are no signs, or if it is illegal to take a left turn, only to find an officer waiting for them at the end of the street with a violations book." The two most controversial points in the traffic draft, according to El-Tahan, concern the licensing of taxis -- the law will effectively prohibit taxis more than 20 years old from operating, which El-Tahan says it makes sense technically but not economically -- and of trailers, which are to be banned from Egypt's roads within three years. "Truck owners will lose around LE120,000 per truck, the average cost of each trailer, causing losses to industry and trade which will reach millions of pounds." An estimated 57,000 trailers currently transport 150 million tonnes of goods every year. "Owners must be granted at least five years to convert to stand alone vehicles," says El-Tahan, who also points out that the draft law restricts custodial sentences to driving on the wrong direction of the street, driving without a licence or driving when drunk. The draft law fails to address the chaos that prevails on Egypt's roads, says MP Saber Amer, a member of PA's Defence and National Security Committee, and will continue to do so as long as legislation which purports to regulate traffic is enforced haphazardly. "If a law is not implemented it is pointless. The problem is with the system, not existing or draft laws," he says, which already prohibit driving on the wrong side of a street and penalise drivers who have received two or more warnings. The Defence and National Security Committee reports that 7,000 people were killed in traffic accidents last year, a figure which Amer believes could be reduced if traffic officers were given the authority to spot fine drivers who violate existing regulations. What is amazing, says Zahran, is that traffic continues to move in Egypt, that you can get into a car and eventually arrive at your destination. Life has not ground to a halt, despite the chaos on the roads, and the country has not fallen to pieces. "We are stagnant as a society. We are not developing but we survive," he says, arguing that the state of Egypt's streets reflects a much bigger problem, and that "traffic problems will only be solved when those larger problems have been successfully addressed."
