Tag Archives | violation

Should Uber Be Blamed For Rebecca Dykes Murder?

By Rami on December 21, 2017 in Transportation

I kept following the news and what people wrote on blogs and social media over the last few days about the murder of Rebecca Dykes on Friday night, and I found it quite astonishing how almost everybody was steering the conversation from Uber’s lack of responsibility to blaming the murder on our sexist culture.

I do acknowledge that we have a problem in our Lebanese society. Some women are exposed to domestic violence, others suffer from sexual harassment… but whether you like it or not this is unfortunately part of life and nothing is going to change overnight, just like you can’t expect gun violence to suddenly end in the US. Small progress however is being made thanks to the efforts of NGOs like Abaad and Kafa for example.

Still, the problem with the case of Rebecca Dykes doesn’t only lie in our culture which looks down on women, but also in the fact that Uber massively fucked up by allowing a driver with a criminal record to join their platform while people usually opt to use their service to feel in safer hands.

According to Uber’s webite, a clean Judicial Record is a minimum requirements for those who want to drive for them. Therefore, this incident could have been avoided if someone did their job right by rejecting this driver from getting on board… And to make things worse, they didn’t even issue a public statement to at least condemn the crime or apologize for the violation they did. On the other hand, when you visit their Facebook page, you ironically get greeted by an image with the tag line “Cheers to Safer Nightlife”. RIGHT!!!

Uber also had a similar problem in UK earlier this year by the way and were stripped of their licence in London for failure to report criminal offenses and lack of performing driver background checks. So it’s only logical to hold them accountable for doing the same here as well, in hope of at least getting a straight explanation about what went wrong on their side.

Update:

Uber reached out to me to give their side and below is what they wrote:

“All drivers that use the Uber app in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record.“ – Uber spokesperson

We can confirm that the driver arrested for this horrific attack had a clean background check and all the correct government permits.

We are in close contact with the authorities and we’re assisting their investigation in any way we can.

The Problem With The New Red Light Cameras in Beirut

By Rami on February 18, 2017 in Government, Law

The traffic management center in Lebanon recently installed some red light cameras around Beirut in order to enforce traffic laws by automatically photographing people who run red lights or those who stop their cars on red AFTER the white stop bar. In their first tests, they unsurprisingly were able to record a violation every 8 seconds!

However, while the installation of these cameras is just logical in order to ensure the new traffic law is fully applied, you cant but feel that it is an ill-timed step… I mean let’s be honest, the majority of those who apply for a driving license show up on their test day to sign some papers and end up getting their license no matter how poor their knowledge about traffic laws is, and I really doubt most drivers are aware that you’re not supposed to stop the cars after the white bar on a red light. In fact, if you abide by this rule don’t be surprised to see people cutting you off and stopping in front of you…

The ultimate purpose for applying traffic rules is to reduce road accidents and avoid traffic jams. So it it were up to me, I would have allocated this project money to educate the masses and recruit additional police officers to ensure that the basic laws are applied. Till now, wherever you go in Beirut you see taxi cars and minibuses picking up passengers wherever they please on the road. Moreover, double parking is like norm everywhere… solving these two problems alone should guarantee making the traffic smoother all over the city. Let alone other problems caused by asshole motorbikers and pedestrians who insist on crossing the road no matter what color is the traffic light.

But then again, someone now thinks it is time to erect these cameras regardless of any other priorities, so brace yourselves, tickets are coming!

This Sums Up The Hypocrisy in Our Society

By Rami on June 22, 2015 in Lebanon

Every now and then photos like the one above surface on the internet and people start showering the Lebanese police and governmental employees in general with criticism.

No one is sure yet how authentic this photo is since the ISF hinted on twitter that the policeman might have done this stunt on a closed highway as part of some training. It would be really ugly if it turns out to be true, I mean this is the kind of stuff you expect zouzou ebba guys to be pulling on the highway, so having this officer acting the same way is just plain unacceptable…!

But thinking about the photo and the reactions it got for a moment make you realize it actually sums up the hypocrisy in our society…

The man is basically in charge of fining those who violate the law by performing such stunts, yet he enjoys doing them himself! Likewise, we tweet myriads of photos showing ISF officers texting on duty, while we fail to drop our phone when driving. We even argue that the new traffic law should allow us to check our phone on red lights!

We report tens of ISF officers on motorcycles without helmets, yet we also hate to wear them because it’s too hot and they mess our hair! We also break twitter writing about people bruning red lights around the city, but we are of course allowed to do it after 10PM because we know better. Oh and the best of all we also hate when people take advantage on us through “wasta”, but we absolutely have no problem using the same “wasta” to break the rules too!

So yeah, the photo is still ugly, and the officer still deserves to be punished for it, but next time you see something similar, don’t react as if it’s something out of this world, because what you will be seeing is just a reflection of this hypocrite society we live in.

Busting Law 174 violators in Lebanon

By Rami on February 24, 2013 in Lebanon

The people behind Law 174’s page on Facebook are doing a good job by not just indicating which places are violating the smoking ban in Lebanon, but also naming the public figures who are breaking the law.

Among the people who made it to the page so far are Assi Hellani who owns “Assi” restaurant in Verdun, Dr. Joseph Azouri who owns “Le Maillon Cafe” along with 12 other doctors, Nathalie Fadlallah who owns “f by Nathalie”, Marlene Boutros Harb, and Nada Riad Salameh.

The number of violations people regularly report to the page definitely calls for increasing the number of tourist policemen in the country!

The wonders of the Lebanese University in Hadath

By Rami on November 16, 2012 in Lebanon

I can understand the images of March 8 leaders at the Lebanese university faculty of science in Hadath, as it became the norm in Lebanon for the dominant political party at a certain Lebanese University branch to control the student council, and of course put up the images of their leaders all over the place as a way to mark their territory.

But what I really find it disturbing is allowing some people to set up a cellular shop inside the university campus and even worse, remain silent over the occupation of the university’s cafeteria that currently offers shisha! And this is what is actually happening in Hadath.

The below video was shot by a journalist in Now Lebanon who was threatened for taking photos inside the campus, but fortunately she had the balls to publish them online. You may read her article about the whole thing here.

[hana-flv-player video=”www.nowlebanon.com/Library/Files/Interviews/Lebanese-university.flv” width=”450″ description=”” player=”5″ autoload=”false” autoplay=”false” loop=”false” autorewind=”true” splashimage=”http://www.nowlebanon.com/ContentPictures/Lebanese-university-315-111512045709.jpg” /]

Make sure to also check this additional article published in Al-Akhbar shedding light on similar breaches in the same campus which actually seems like it exists on some other planet where police is never heard of!

With these two articles, I now believe we should never act surprised next time a family announce their own military wing, because a government that cannot control a single campus definitely cannot control 10,452Km2 of land!

Kamashtak – More naming and shaming of Lebanese drivers

By Rami on October 2, 2012 in Lebanon

Kamashtak is a new website by a group of people aiming to document the various parking violations causing traffic jams around Beirut by taking photos of the violating vehicles, tagging them on a map, and finally posting them on the website along with the violation type and the vehicle’s plate number. It’s a bit similar to Cheyef 7alak initiative by LBC Group, except that Kamashtak is limited to parking violations and is not crowd-sourced.

I don’t know how effective will this initiative be. I mean Cheyef 7alak is already quite popular but did it change a thing? Thousands of photos have been uploaded so far and we still suck ass at driving… talk about wasted efforts. Anyway if you ever see the above sticker on your car, just know that you’ve done something wrong!

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