If you asked young Emirati males to name their five favorite activities, at least two of them would be watching soccer and driving cars.

Emiratis, you may have deduced, are the Arabs who live here in the United Arab Emirates. They constitute about 15 percent of the population but about 98 percent of the actual citizens. The rest of us are just visitors, whether for a week, a month a year or a decade.

So,  Emiratis … two things they love: Soccer and cars.

I did a story for today’s editions of The National which brought those two concepts together … in a way that was unfortunate, at first, but may have a happy ending.

If you didn’t follow the link, here is the gist of the story.

Back on September 2, the starting goalkeeper for the Al Ain club, as well as for the UAE national team, was nearly killed in a car crash while commuting from his home in the north of Al Ain, the country’s biggest inland city.

He suffered a broken jaw, a broken clavicle, a broken cheek bone … and a skull fracture that left his left arm and leg paralyzed for weeks.

Turns out that Yousuf Abdulrahman was not wearing a seat belt. He also admits he tended to speed, though he does not remember any of the specifics from just before his accident until two weeks later,  when he regained consciousness in a hospital in Dubai.

The car was destroyed, and how. The engine ended up about 55 yards from where the remains of the car finally came to rest. All the windows were broken, all the tires had exploded. Abdulrahman told me that everyone who saw the car said, “The driver of that car must be dead.”

Also, in the early weeks, when the injuries to his face were obvious and he was in a coma, other people who visited him in intensive care thought he would die. He looked awful.

When he finally came around, he saw his brother, Ibrahim, eating. He said, “Why are you eating? It’s Ramadan.” (Devout Muslims fast throughout the day during the month of Ramadan, which this year straddled September 1.) His brother said, “It’s not Ramadan. You have been unconscious for two weeks.”

Abdulrahman is only 21, and he recovered, though he was frightened by the paralysis, once he came around, and worried when the paralysis to his two limbs receded only gradually. He wondered if he would be able to play soccer again.

He spent five weeks in the hospital, then nearly three months in Germany going through rehbailitation, and he returned to his Al Ain club two weeks ago. He said he feels about 20 percent of his old self, but hopes that with six more months of rehab that he can play again. We would have to say there is at least a chance he will never regain his skills to the point where he will again be an elite keeper.

An important part of this story is the driving aspect. Traffic accidents are easily the No. 1 cause of death for young male Emiratis. A study here in Abu Dhabi has suggested that only 11 percent of all Emiratis wear seatbelts.  And the roads here are madness. The death rate here, on the roads, is about triple what it is in California.

Abdulrahman concedes that his injuries would not have been as severe had he been wearing a seatbelt because he would not have been thrown around inside the car. (The car’s airbag did not come out, which is odd, but exacerbated the situation.)

So it was a happy story — guy almost killed but on the road to recovery — as well as a cautionary tale. Wear a seatbelt. Don’t speed.  If one Emirati hears the story and slows down and clicks his belt, the story will have done some good beyond perhaps entertaining readers for a few minutes.

I think this particularly guy … won’t be speeding without a seatbelt from here on out.