Qatar is one of the countries that I've been to which has quite strict rules regarding traffic violations. This is no surprise when you've been here driving around with your car. Although there are roundabouts at almost every junction, the rules there are mostly ignored by the Qataris themselves. It already happened to me several times that I was stopping at the entrance of such roundabout because from the left hand side there were cars coming. The same moment I stopped a Qatari passed me full speed on the left hand side into the roundabout, disregarding the other cars.

Well, I think one of the proverbs I heard from a colleague is quite right. You can take a man out of the desert, but you can't take the desert out of a man.

Some of the roundabouts are now being equipped with traffic lights as there are always traffic jams there. And of course at the big junctions. It seems that the obeying of regulations is not that common, when you have a look at the warning signs also shown in the big malls.



As a rough estimation, 10.000 Riyals equals the amount of 1700 Euros or almost 2750 US-Dollars.

Those are some pretty stiff fines.