A female Saudia Arabian driver crashed her vehicle near Jeddah with a friend in the car last Saturday. The driver suffered serious injuries and was hospitalised, while her friend was killed. An incident like this usually wouldn’t garner international attention, but this case is a little different.
First of all, women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia, but there has been an increasing number of women defying the law and pushing for it to be reformed. Second of all, one of the leading activists against the ban was initially reported by many media groups to have been involved in the recent crash, but she is alive and well.
On Monday, Abdulaziz al-Zunaidi, a spokesman for the police, said that a Saudi woman overturned her four-wheel-drive car in the northern Ha’el province on Saturday (January 21). The driver was hospitalised after suffering several injuries, he added, and her companion was killed immediately. The family of the woman who was killed is withholding her name.
Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year-old computer security consultant, was misidentified as being involved in the crash by some reporters, while others misidentified her as being killed in the crash. However, she has talked to journalists to say that she is alive, and not only that…she wasn’t even in the car. On Monday, she said that the woman who was killed in the accident wasn’t part of a group defying the driving ban on women.
Sharif and Rasha al-Dowiia, another defiant Saudi female driver, say the deceased woman lived in a small Bedouin community that is largely ignored by officials. Women drive regularly in Ha’el, but they are left alone by police since the Bedouin are detached from mainstream Saudi Arabian society. What are women suppose to do if they are with their husband and something happens? Beyond emergencies, women are at the mercy of men to do even the most basic errands. Not all Saudi women are spoiled, live luxurious lives and have drivers.
Women in Saudi Arabia, who can, are able to hire drivers, but those who can’t have to depend on their husbands or close male relatives to take them around for errands. Women are also obligated to wear veils in public and can’t travel without the accompaniment of male relatives.
Sharif and Dowiia have both been jailed for their defiance of the driving ban. Sharif was detained for 10 days last May after posting a video on YouTube that showed her driving. This kind of launched her status as the face for the push against the ban, but she wasn’t the only one to post a video. The move renewed criticism of the ban, but the law still hasn’t been changed.
Another woman was sentenced to receive ten lashes, but the sentence was overturned after King Abdullah intervened. In late June, another five were arrested for driving in Jeddah. These arrests come after several women have been killed in car crashes in recent years while defying the driving ban. A female driver and three of her ten female companions were killed in a November 2010 crash.
