Safety should be key feature of driving courses in UAE


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ABU DHABI // Driver courses should focus more on fostering a culture of road safety and traffic behaviour instead of the mechanical aspects of driving to pass a test.

“Students need to be taught more than just how to drive,” said Robert Hodges, chief operating officer at Emirates Driving Institute. “They should be taught how to improve the way they think about the act of driving. They need to develop a safety culture and respect for other road users.”

Good driver education helps drivers to realise the importance of planning ahead.

At Emirates Driving Company, in Abu Dhabi, students are taught basic driving skills and traffic laws, basic vehicle knowledge, car safety and how they should drive under difficult conditions, said Khaled Al Mansoori, chief executive.

“Ensuring that drivers apply what they have learnt, especially abiding by traffic rules, comes down to traffic enforcement,” he said.

To be effective, road safety education should be part of the school curriculum, said Thomas Edelmann, founder of the website Road Safety UAE. “It will protect children who learn how to buckle up at a young age,” Mr Edelmann said. “When our children become motorists, they learn proper driving behaviour if instilled at an early age.”

All road users, not just drivers, should be educated, said Simon Labbett, regional director for the Transport Research Laboratory. Pedestrians should be encouraged to obey traffic control signals at zebra crossings and junctions, and not cross from undesignated areas.

“Education has its place to ensure that knowledge is transferred, but it needs to be linked with effective enforcement,” Mr Labbett said. “On many occasions it’s evident that drivers choose to disregard the legislation in their driving behaviour. This is not a knowledge issue but a driver’s choice.”

Dr Salaheddine Bendak, an associate professor at the University of Sharjah, said: “Education without enforcement would yield limited effects. Together they would give much better results, based on research.”

rruiz@thenational.ae

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More on UAE road safety:

UAE road deaths sharply decreasing every year

Road safety laws must enacted and enforced in UAE

UAE increasing efforts to keep pedestrians safe

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The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.

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How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers

Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.

It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.

The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.

Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.

Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.

He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.

AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”

A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.

Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.

Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.

Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.

By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.

Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.

In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”

Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.

She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.

Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.

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