With soaring fuel costs, chronic traffic jams and the devil-may-care recklessness of fellow drivers, Iranian motorists probably thought they already had enough to contend with. Now a new hazard has appeared to further complicate matters: rising camel prices. Insurers, motorists and even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have got the hump over a decision to link compensation payments for accidents on the country’s notoriously high-speed roads to the market price of the slow-moving beasts more commonly associated with desert travel. Iran’s judiciary – which is independent of Ahmadinejad’s government – has decreed that from next week compensation or “blood money” for relatives of fatal road accident victims should equal the price of 100 camels. That will have the effect of doubling compensation payouts from 450m to 900m rials (£52,000). The judiciary spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, said the steep rise was due to a failure to link annual compensation rates to the price of camels in recent years, meaning awards had been artificially low. >>>
