General Information » Getting Around » Car

Bahrain’s road system is fairly well developed, but recent years have seen a surge in the number of cars owned and this has led to increasing pressure on the country’s roads. These are currently undergoing expansion, but as a result there are a few temporary bottlenecks in and around Manama, where new lanes are being added to highways, or flyovers are being built.

Most of the major roadworks are due to be completed by the end of the year. In any case, the country is so small that even a ‘long’ journey with a traffic jam doesn’t usually exceed 30 minutes. It’s just that Bahrain residents have got used to being able to get almost anywhere they want to in under 20 minutes! In the centre of Manama the roads are older and are limited to one or two lanes.

The highways are generally three or four lanes and well-maintained. Blue signs indicate the main areas within the country and brown signs show heritage and tourism sites, and other places of interest. Roads are also named on smaller blue signs and these are often either numbers or names of prominent people in the country’s recent history. However, most people don’t refer to the roads by their official names, and in fact, with a few exceptions, probably don’t even know what they are officially called.

People refer to the roads primarily by landmarks they pass, which could be notable roundabouts, hotels, buildings or shops. So instead of being told, ‘go down Khalifa Road’, you could quite easily be told ‘it’s along Love Lane in Adliya, behind the Ferrari showroom’.

Driving Habits and Regulations

While the road infrastructure meets international standards, the general standard of driving is not. Although driving is perhaps of a higher standard than many of the neighbouring countries, there are nonetheless regular accidents. The main issue is discipline. Drivers are often somewhat self-centred, lacking lane and speed discipline. People also regularly use mobile phones when driving, which reduces their awareness. Although there have been calls to ban this, it hasn’t happened yet.

One of the main reasons for the state of the driving standards is that the traffic police are not overtly seen to be enforcing existing laws strictly enough. So for example, although there are laws governing the use of seatbelts and restrictions on children travelling in the front seat of a vehicle, you often see unbelted children sitting on their parent’s lap (even sometimes on the driver’s lap!), but traffic policemen won’t bother to stop the car and apprehend the driver.

Speeding is often cited as the reason for serious accidents on Bahrain’s roads, but...