National Day is an important holiday for the people living in the UAE. It is a day of patriotism, celebration, and thankfulness by people for being able to live in such a great nation. An emerging trend over the recent years has been for people to decorate their cars and to participate in National Day parades.
Vehicles are decorated in many different ways to celebrate National Day. The colors of the nation’s flag are incorporated in many ways, including spandex covers for car hoods, mirrors and other elements. These colorful decorations are very affordable, with a mirror cover only costing Dh10, so pretty much any driver is able to participate in the festivities. Some, however are far more expensive, with custom decals and hood scarves sometimes costing upward of Dh3000.
By far the most popular decorative elements are images of national leaders and heroes. These are semi-transparent and are often placed over vehicle widows and rear-windshields. These too can be very expensive, but seem to be only getting more popular as time passes.
Despite the festive nature of this holiday and the vehicle decorations, police in many areas of the UAE are cracking down on people whose decorations seem excessive or are dangerous. Sometimes, the window decals can impair visibility and make it dangerous for a person to be on the road at all. Also celebrants tend to pile far more people into their vehicles than is safe, occasionally even allowing people to ride on the top of their cars. People also sometimes perform dangerous stunts in their cars in an attempt to gain attention or be amusing. Fines for people who have dangerous decorations or who behave recklessly can be fined anywhere from Dh1200-Dh1500. Police are also only allowing these decorations to be on cars for a very limited time before National Day and say they must be removed immediately afterward. Police have patrols that look for anyone acting dangerously, having too much decoration, or blocking the traffic flow, and issue them citations.
Though there are official National Day parades, motorists also take part in unofficial ones. The police stance on these is that they are illegal and anybody caught participating in one can face serious penalties. In the year 2012 in Dubai alone, police seized 88 cars and cited 1245 drivers for these sort of violations. This does not seem excessive, however, because in the same year, there were 24 crashes and even a death resulting from excessive decoration and misbehavior.
