Driving Middle East style

Need an adrenalin rush? Want to take your life in your hands? Try doing the daily school run - in Bahrain.

Roads in the Middle East are the second most dangerous in the world - only Africa's are worse. This statistic comes as no surprise to those who live here. Venture onto Bahrain's roads on any given day and chances are you will see an accident, or at the very least several near misses brought about by unbelievably stupid driving manouevres.

When I applied for my Bahraini driving licence, I received a copy of the Bahraini Highway Code. The rules of the road are all in there, all up to international standards. The trouble is, no-one adheres to them and no-one enforces them.

So just so you are in the know should you ever come to the Middle East and be stupid enough to hire a car, here are my top ten tips for driving like a local:

1. Seatbelts: don't fasten them, they are a nuisance and will crease your clothes. And never, ever allow your child to wear one - much better to keep them amused while you are on the motorway by bounding around the car, leaping from front to back, draping themselves across the dashboard or sticking their heads out of the windows or sunshine roof.

2. Car seats: don't buy them; they are totally unnecessary. Put baby in the front on his mother's lap or if you are a lone driver, sit him on your lap.

3. Mobile phones: only use them while driving. Journeys can be so boring and a good chat with your buddies provides a welcome distraction from everything else going on around you.

4. Seat position: if you are male, under 25 and drive any sort of Toyota or Nissan, then your seat should be near to horizontal so that you struggle to see over the steering wheel (which you must only clasp with one hand as the other is holding either your phone or cigarette). For anyone else, the only rule is that you must position your seat so that you can't see in any of your mirrors (if you are even aware they are there and serve other purposes than applying lip gloss).

5. Indicators: don't use them. All that pushing the lever up and down - such a waste of energy. And anyway, you know where you are going.

6. Parking: if you must park in a designated parking area, then make sure you park at such an angle that you take up at least three spaces. Otherwise, use pavements, garage entrances, verges, the hard shoulder and, on Fridays, the lane of the dual carriageway closest to the mosque.

7. Motorway driving: overtake or undertake - both are fine as long as you are exceeding the speed limit and then cut in front of the person in the next lane close enough to take out their front wing. Oh, and tailgating is de rigueur.

8. Roundabouts: always make sure you are in the wrong lane to exit so that you have to suddenly and dramatically cut across cars in the other lanes to reach your destination - without indicating, of course: see rule 5 above.

9. Traffic lights: if you are at the front of the queue for a red light, make sure you edge forward into the junction ahead so that you get the best possible racing start when the lights change. As soon as the lights are green, any car behind the lead car should honk its horn madly and incessantly in the hope that all the cars in front will instantly vapourise. And most importantly, never forget the 10-second-rule: once the lights turn red again, cars must continue through them for at least 10 seconds or risk the car behind ramming into them.

10. Road markings and signs: on the whole, it is best to ignore these. Drive the wrong way up that one-way street if it's your quickest route home; always drive into that yellow box to make sure you block rush hour traffic from all other directions; and never ever take any notice of chevrons or double yellow lines.

Good luck! You'll need it.