Stay safe!! Avoid vehicle accident hassles (Riyadh)

Dear All,

I am just sharing my personnel experience in case someone encounter vehicle accident on road in Riyadh or Saudi Arabia in general. Please I am NOT a legal or authorized person in any case, but just sharing my personnel experience to help or provide more knowledge to our expat community.

First rule of thumb is one must follow all traffic rules of the kingdom. The rules are well defined by the government, and one’s own problem if he follow it or not in my opinion.

One must have insurance of the vehicle. It is better to have a full coverage in my experience, because traffic especially in Riyadh is too much. The smaller damage for vehicle may cost more as one may expect in case one chooses the manufacture to fix it. For cheap alternate, one may go to nearby any reasonable workshop, but I never tried it so I can’t recommend.

In case accident happens our normal reaction is we get panic, but I have below personnel advices.

1- Don’t be panic. Stay calm and silent.
2- Turn off your car engine and don’t move vehicle from the place.
3- Take as many as picture at the sport you can with both or all vehicles number plates, area of damage, and remember use various angles.
4- Immediately call and inform NAJAM/Insurance at Protected content .
5- You may talk to the other party, but in my experience it is useless. You never know what second person will tell to insurance or may be followed by police.
6- Prepare for anything to happen to you especially if you can’t speak Arabic. Some Arabic speaking personnel are very cunning, although they might understand English they will never utter a single word in such situation. Some of the personnel will try to put you in as much as trouble they can. Remember not all figures are same though.
7- In case you can’t speak Arabic like in my case, I try to get someone on phone or to personally come to the scene to speak for me.
8- In case both or all vehicles have insurance not much to worry. Let NAJAM handle the situation. They have more experience, and generally they know how to handle the procedure. But as I mention above remember at this stage other party especially if he is on fault will try to put 100% fault on you.
9- Must take a paper from NAJAM to repair your call if both parties have insurance.
10- In case other party or one party do not have insurance. The one who has no insurance either should pay at the spot or resolve the issue or go to jail. This is another detailed story for another time. But remember this is more tedious task, and one will stuck in much lengthy legal processes.
11- Sometimes police will try to resolve the situation by asking the other party to pay in case they have no insurance. Police may also ask both of you to go to a workshop and take estimate pay and finish the case. In case both parties are agreed, they have to come back to the same place the accident happened.
12- In case police takes the one of the party to Jail. The other party will have to take Three Protected content for his vehicle for the claim. These three Protected content can only be taken once police has provided you with a paper for that. The estimates will be done from Government/Police’s estimation workshop in Scenaya (I don’t know exact location, I was only once there with the help of a friend).
13- Once you got the three Protected content bring these back to the designated police station. Depending upon the scenario police may call the party in jail or his sponsor for paying the middle estimate or police decided estimates. The party in jail should pay the amount to you.
14- In case the party in jail does not pay you, you can request at police station to provide you with a paper of insurance.
15- Once you get the insurance paper, now you need to follow it with insurance, workshop and so on.

In conclusion, an accident in Riyadh may stretch one a lot especially in terms of time, money and fatigue. Follow the laws on the ground, and hopefully you will be in better situation.

Thanks for reading the above long story, and again I would like to mention that these are only my personnel experience notes, and I am not authorized in any senses about local laws or rules.

Drive safe!!

Kind regards,
Naveed