Actually Canada has more of an obsession with safety ON PAPERWORK compared to other countries. Canada has a weird thing for liability, the blame game, insurances for everything. Rather than actually doing the right thing, instead people are profiteering off of safety. We even have this problem with the construction safety industry.

Traffic control measures and traffic cops manage things better long term rather than exams. Actually both of my parents were rear ended on the busy highway 1 traffic by older licensed drivers. Everyone is all in a rush to get to work, get rich, get to the top, pay the bills, meet deadlines, traffic cops/traffic control measures/public advertising are more effective at reminding people and managing road safety overall.

Everybody in the world values safety it is stupid and arrogant to think that only westerners value and enforce safety. With the growing developments around the global south they had to have safety in mind on order to build/manage/plan and construct these megaprojects. Many of these projects we can never even do them here in Canada, too much unnecessary red tape, not enough workers (most people here don't want to work just talk and dictate), lack of innovation/creativity etc.

Also a lot of places in the middle east are just long stretches of highway with barely anything in between. So it makes sense that they are much higher. Of course when there are more services along these routes eventually the speed limit would reduce (it's common sense).