The UAE Road Safety Monitor report has just been released and the results have highlighted a rise in the number of distracted drivers, mobile phones behind the wheel, speeding violations and traffic collisions. The biannual survey was conducted by an independent organisation, YouGov, and was based on a unique sample of 1,016 UAE residents, all of whom were asked to identify their perceptions of other motorists and the main causes of national road accidents.

Since the first survey conducted in 2015, drivers have reported that the roads are safer and have also praised the country’s advancements in road infrastructure.

That being said, the majority of data pointed to bad driving habits and a general trend of recklessness and vulnerability. One in five motorists were found to have been involved in accidents, and six out of 10 respondents claimed they had seen a greater number of vehicles speeding, all in the past six months, while the instances of tailgating rose by 59 percent in the Q1 2018 poll, Khaleej Times reports.

The survey was published shortly after Serco Middle East’s yearly road safety event, which proposed policies intended to improve de facto safety regulations as well as administrative centralization. Attendees questioned the UAE’s current driver registration system — which automatically provides many new motorists with licences upon arrival — and motioned to standardize driving examinations across all seven Emirates.

Among those to speak out in light of the recent survey data was Laura Kelly, Assurance Director of Serco Middle East, who called for citizens to internalize the data and accept responsibility.

“As an organization we have got to adapt to that and learn from surveys such as this one. It can help us to be proactive and not allow this behavior to continue,” said Kelly in an article by The National.

On Oct. 7, the French Embassy to the UAE officially opened a local office for its national space agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales, making CNES the first — and only — foreign space agency to have an office in the UAE.

The President of the CNES, Jean-Yves Le Gall, traveled to Abu Dhabi to make the announcement in the presence of Mohammad Al Ahbabi, Director General of the UAE Space Agency.

Following the announcement, Ludovic Pouille, Ambassador of France to the UAE, spoke out to congratulate both countries on their successful cooperation and possibilities for the future.

“It is a major milestone in our space cooperation and a clear sign of the new status of the UAE earned on the space international stage. Between France and the UAE, I used to say that the sky is the limit. Now, I can say: the universe is the limit,” Pouille told The National.

This is not the first time the UAE has partnered up with an international space agency. France has been connected to the UAE Space Agency since April 2015 — a year after the latter was created — when both countries met to sign a memorandum of understanding. More recently, the UAE Space Agency signed an Implementing Agreement with NASA — the United States Space Agency — which plans to reaffirm cooperation on human and robotic exploration of the surface of the moon, research and flight activities in low-Earth orbit and research ventures.

On July 4, 2016, former Gulf News editor Francis Matthew called Dubai police to report that thieves had broken into his three-bedroom apartment and killed his wife Jane while he was at work. Upon later investigation, Matthew was found guilty of murdering his wife with a hammer and was sentenced to ten years in prison for “physical assault leading to death.”

The initial verdict prompted the victim’s family to argue for additional justice. Since then, the case’s circumstances have changed and the sentence has been extended.

Matthew’s legal team made an appeal of insanity to the high court, claiming that the former editor was suffering from temporary insanity triggered by "emotional stress" when he beat his wife to death with a hammer earlier this summer. The appeal itself was held on Oct. 7.

“Due to severe pressure and emotional stress, he suffered from temporary insanity, which means that his logic and mental abilities were shut down and he lost all ability to distinguish right from wrong,” Dr. Muna Al Juhary stated in the same National article.

However, Matthew’s appeal for a reduced sentence based on insanity was rejected by the Dubai Court of Appeals; his conviction was changed and his overall prison sentence has been increased to fifteen years.