Shrinking Jordan

In another example of using media to hype bad policy, a number of traffic accidents in the last months have been used as a pretext to keeping the temporary traffic law on the books. This, despite the fact that the lower house of parliament rejected this legislation.

Now, the 80km drive from Amman to Irbid takes about 1 ½ hours. The highway has no less than 6 patrols looking for speeders. Most of the road has speed limits set at 80 or 90 km per hour.

Now, in principle there should be no objection to controlling speed. However, the speed limits are much lower than any reasonable driver would feel comfortable adhering to. To be blunter, one feels like an idiot driving at 70 km per hour on some of the stretches. It is obvious that these limits were not placed based on consideration of road conditions, but were set simply to entrap drivers.

In the final analysis, this short lighted approach of money grabbing will lead people to restrict their travels outside Amman to the bare minimum. The fines are too high and the limits are too low and the road has become too unpleasant. In the final analysis, this will lead to even more isolation for cities outside Amman. Who needs to leave Amman and invest someplace else anyway?