Saudi Women Take to Road to Defy Driving Ban

Motorists in the Saudi capital this morning morning may have spotted something rarer than the Arabian unicorn: female drivers. Activists say brave women around the country got behind the wheel before dawn today in a protest against the kingdom's ban on women driving. Despite a heavy police presence, some women managed to drive around Riyadh without incident, a protest organizer tells AP.

There is no written law in Saudi Arabia saying women can't drive, but the ban comes from religious edicts by clerics. One activist who posted a video on YouTube of herself driving was jailed for a week last month and forced to sign a pledge not to drive again. "We have a saying," she told CNN before her detention. "The rain starts with a single drop. This is a symbolic thing." (More Wahhabism stories.)