Photo by Ali Moayedian, 2002

Another road accident has just been added to the huge pile of accidents in Iran. A tragic accident on Tehran-Chalous road has left three people dead, among them two prominent members of the parliament, and has left another parliamentarian injured. This provoked me to share my recent experience driving on Tehran-Chalous road.

This summer I visited Iran after being away for 23 years. So it was no surprise that I had become sort of a stranger and outsider when it came to many Iranian issues. And driving Iranian-style happened to be one of these issues. I had actually driven in Tehran and on the roads before I had left Iran. But now I definitely did not feel comfortable doing it! Driving in Tehran is truly an adventure. One must be prepared to face incoming traffic from any direction and without much if any warnings! Street lights, signs and markings are routinely ignored. One-way means the law-abiding drivers will have to drive in reverse! And the list goes on...

But two days before our departure for United States, family members convinced us that we should go for a one day trip to Kelardasht, a beautiful town close to the Caspian coast. We had actually planned to visit the Caspian, but we soon found out traveling with children forbids planning! Our two sons were getting sick alternatively keeping us busy with doctors and hospitals visits, and finally when they were both stricken with chickenpox, we had to give up the idea of visiting the Caspian. But after we were told that it only takes 3 hours to get to Kelardasht and 3 hours to get back, we became game! We decided to leave with four cars early in the morning. My choice was to either let my young nephew drive or to drive myself. So I decided to give the nephew a break! He had actually driven us all over Tehran which we appreciated a lot. I had head a few things or two about the Chalous road, and I wasn't about to take a chance! So finally I sat in the driving seat in Tehran. But considering we headed out at 5:00 on a Friday morning, there wasn't much traffic on the streets and I managed to safely pilot the car out of Tehran!

Chalous road sign:
"Dear driver, passing at the curves is playing with your life. Why?"
Photo by Ali Moayedian, 2002

After about an hour we passed Karaj and got on the Chalous road. And what a beautiful road it was, full of majestic sceneries. But this is also a road that over the past few decades has been witness to many tragedies, mostly caused by deadly accidents, but also caused by avalanches. The road itself did not seem dangerous to me. It's just a two-lane two-way road with a lot of curves that goes through the mountains and passes through many tunnels -it kind of reminded me of the road to Yosemite national park-. There are no center dividers, but guardrails have been installed at dangerous curves. And due to the many blind curves, no-passing zones cover a good portion of this road. And this is exactly where "danger" and "deadly" come into play. I could not stop noticing how routinely the no-passing zones were being ignored and violated. Even when going through a blind curve, where common sense should be above any law, cars were passing one after the other. The same was true in the tunnels. So it was no surprise that by the time we reached Kelardasht, we had witnessed three bad accidents. The worst of them involved an overturned truck that had hit a car, also badly damaged, right outside a tunnel.

And to my surprise, the road police on this very busy road was pretty much invisible, or at least they did not enforce the law very actively. To be fair, there was one instance when the car behind me was actually pulled over for violating the no-pass zone. But even then, according to the popular belief, most stopped drivers bribe their way out!

Photo by Ali Moayedian, 2002

Still this is issue is clearly not that of law enforcement. It's not even fair to say it's a cultural issue. Why would so many people knowingly risk their lives? A big reason for this is the fact that this road is connecting two very important regions of Iran, that is Tehran and the Caspian coast. And two lanes are simply not enough to address the huge flow of traffic on this road. And the authorities are of course aware of this fact too. That's why on Friday afternoons a good portion of the road becomes one-way toward Tehran. It saves lives and it reduces traffic jams. Even so, the endless flow of cars quickly fills the one-way road, and it still took us six hours to get back to Tehran-- I gave a grilling to the relatives who had claimed it only takes under three hours each way. We were on the road for about 11 hours and only spent a few hours in Kelardasht. And of course they were blaming my "slow" driving!

I'm of course not offering a solution here. I'm merely sharing my observations. Before we landed in Tehran, I was telling my wife that I'm not here to fix anything or even complain about things I may not like or approve of. I only wanted to be an observer. 23 years ago when I had just left, I had the solutions to all the problems in Iran or even in the world! But as the years passed, I've tried to became a wiser person. So now I feel that as an outsider I can only be an observer. This is not to say that the old habits are completely gone! I've probably even stepped over the observer line in this article too, while my intention was only sharing my experience driving on the Chalous road.

But there must certainly be a solution to this problem. It's obvious that both the people and the authorities in Iran are aware of the high number of accidents and fatalities on the Iranian roads. The eye-opening statistics are being repeated after every tragic accident. So the question is what's being done to address this issue? Unlike the Chalous road, traveling from Tehran to Isfahan was a breeze. The 4-lane divided highway certainly made a big difference, and we did not observe any accidents along the way. But there is still an abundance of narrow and undivided roads all over Iran, and this coupled with unsafe drivers and unsafe cars will continue to exact a heavy toll on the Iranian population.