sjanzeir

Thanks! I know where you're coming from with this. Once you get the hang of it, know what (and who) to expect and look out for, and apply a reasonable level of common sense, you'll be fine.

With that being said, the country - and the people, both local and foreign - has changed whole lot recently. The Saudi Arabia I live in today is a far cry from the country I had known 10, five, or even two years ago.

On the one hand, the (new) government has been cracking down with all sorts of new laws and high tech surveillance. They encourage people to document and report incidents with pictures and video via any audiovisual means that's handy, be it a smartphone, action cam, and dash cam, or security cam; they even have an app just for that now, which I regularly use to report the more serious stuff I come across while riding or, more and more rarely these days, driving. A police officer once told me that I should never ride without an action cam.

Traffic-related litigation is even done across its own courts, separate from the country's core penal system. The new transport code even specifies rules that govern cycling and cyclists and their use of public roads. There still are those who run red lights and stop signs, go against traffic just to get to a nearer exit or u-turn, make left turns from right-hand lanes, hoon their modified offroaders on public streets (all of which you'd probably seen while you were over here,) but they and everyone else are more aware now that it's much more likely for there to be a camera trained at them anywhere at any given time. YouTube is filled with interesting - if sometimes tragic - videos of what goes on on the streets.

On the other hand, there are fewer people living in Saudi Arabia nowadays. With the recent government and economic reforms, as many as 1.7 million expats - legitimate and otherwise - have left the country. The free-for-all charity that was a migrant worker's heaven is no more. The government is increasingly making it very difficult for expats to live in the country, and making it harder and harder for businesses to hire them, the idea being to create jobs for Saudis on the one hand, and to retain only the most skilled, most useful expats on the other.

What this means on the ground is that people are happier. They are becoming more considerate towards and accepting of other road users, there are fewer cars on the road, less congestion, and less reckless and dangerous behavior. Only God knows whether or not things might improve as women take to the wheels on June 24th, but I'm inclined to stay home for a while