leave it to egyptians to fill in the Gaps, left to us by our gavornment when it comes to traffic. We are truly a genius society! so remember a few days ago i wrote some words on how our government is not doing anything worth a while to cover our traffic problems and i compared us to dubai and turkey ? (article here ) ... well i came across this today and thought it was genius. A new website, called eMokhalfa... just like in bey2olek you report traffic conditions, in eMokhalfa you report people violating traffic. ( i dont think they are the same owners) but what better way to explain the concept than a video. and check out their website now http://emokhalfa.com also check out this excerpt from the website itself You’re probably one of the Egyptians who spend, on average, an hour and a half daily caught in traffic whatever your vehicle is.  Not only that you’re trapped in a car or a bus for an hour and a half, but you’re also witnessing countless violations. This car driver broke into that, this bus driver broke that, and the worse of all? The driver or the passenger who sees all these violations and his only reaction is cursing and criticizing the country as if it is its fault!  We thought that the caught-in-everyday-traffic crowds have to follow the steps of whoever said ‘It’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’. In other words, it’s better than nothing to contribute even slightly in solving one of the many Egyptian traffic problems which is driving violations.  We gave it some thought, and God blessed us with the idea of E-mokhalfa.  E-mokhalfa is a crowd sourcing platform that allows people to monitor and report bad driving conduct of all types of vehicles in Egypt using hi-tech tools . Our slogan is ‘together for safer roads’.  

You might think, if this is what you guys do, then what’s left for traffic police?

No matter the number or spread of traffic cops, they won’t be able to cover the huge number of violations in Egypt. This is why we thought of crowd sourcing.  Crowd sourcing means ‘assigning tasks to people’. In our case, everyone can instantly report a violation or rate any driver’s conduct wherever he is. This can be done without the fear of potential harm from the violator or costing the reporter any money or big effort. All you have to do is, whenever you see a violation, pick up your smart phone and inform us with the plate number of the car/bus/microbus/motorcycle/tuktuk (if it will ever get a plate number) via the E-mokhalfa application/facebook page/twitter account/hotline (you’ll find all these contacts in the ‘Contact us’ page above at the right).  

Ok, then what?

All reports we get will be searchable on the website for whoever interested to know if there are any complaints about his/her car. One might think, oh yeh? Will it make any difference with the violator that people are upset?!  

Indeed yes, allow us to tell you how:

- - In case of school, university and company busses: imagine if the school owner finds out that a driver of one of his busses is reported as a bully who threatens the lives of his own passengers, won’t this make him take an action with this driver hopefully before some parent finds out and makes a big fuss about it ruining his reputation?  -- In case of private cars, microbuses and public busses: imagine if a certain vehicle’s violation is repeatedly reported and the plate number is on top of the violators list on the website. People now know the number by heart and the violator is being blamed by his acquaintances or even people he doesn’t know in the street for violations he could have never thought they’d know about! Can you imagine the social pressure on violators everywhere and the feel of being watched by every citizen not just the police?  When the Egyptians smashed out one of the biggest icons of corruption in the revolution, they were not on a plan by the government or people with special agendas. They were driven by the small efforts of many people who believed that together their small deeds could make a big difference.  Our country deserves that each of us tries to fix something, even a small thing. Help us do so...