Unless you live in a cave you probably heard about, or even experienced, the Blackberry outage this week, which lasted a couple of days in some places.
I have a Blackberry, and yes I have to admit that I am rather addicted to it, and felt like I was missing a limb during this outage (although it was somewhat liberating not feeling like I constantly needed to check my emails). I am a recent convert to the madness however, have been using BB for just over a year after inheriting Stu’s old one when he got a new one from work. And trust me, before I had one of my own I HATED them! And now I am one of those people who is always fiddling with my phone! Ooops.
Anyway that is not the point of this story. An interesting result of this last Blackberry outage, apart from a lot of annoyed people and smug iPhone users, is that there were 40% fewer road accidents in Abu Dhabi during that time. And 20% less in Dubai. Now those are some scary statistics. According to the paper yesterday there is normally one fatal accident in the capital (Abu Dhabi) every 2 days, and during the disruption there weren’t any!
Seriously how is it possible to drive and BBM? Its way worse than texting and that’s bad enough. So in the interest of my own safety I urge everyone who can’t stop themselves to install an app called driveSafe.ly (yes there is an iPhone one too); turn it on when you get into the car and it will read texts and mails to you, and even respond to them letting people know you are driving, so you can concentrate on the road. Great idea, although I am not sure it works in languages other than English.
And I’ll leave you with some other interesting car stuff – firstly Rolls Royce brought their new, fully electric Roller (the 102ex) to Dubai this week, and drove it round the Autodrome (just down the road from us)! Wow that’s fab isn’t it? My gran always wanted a Phantom, I wonder if she would have approved? And then secondly, an old Rover, powered by coffee, has broken the speed record for cars using organic waste, achieving a speed of 107km/h. They drove this car from London to Manchester last year, breaking (creating) another record for the longest distance. Unbelievable? Believe it 🙂
That’s all for today. Happy Diwali to all my Hindu readers for Wednesday (um do I have any? Let me know if you’re out there).
Have a great week, and please, drive safely!!