The government is unlikely to respond because the issue remains so highly sensitive and divisive.

"We would like to remind officials that this is, as many have said, a social and not a religious or political issue," said Fowziyyah al-Oyouni, a founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars. "And since it’s a social issue, we have the right to lobby for it."

Committee members planned to deliver their petition to the king on Saudi Arabia’s national day.

The driving ban applies to all women, Saudi and foreign, and forces families to hire live-in drivers.

The last time the issue was raised was two years ago, when Mohammed al-Zulfa, a member of the unelected Consultative Council, asked his colleagues to think about studying the possibility of allowing women over age 35 or 40 to drive.

The suggestion touched off a fierce controversy that included calls for al-Zulfa’s removal from the council and stripping him of Saudi citizenship, as well as accusations he was encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men.

But supporters of female drivers say the prohibition exists neither in law nor Islam, but is based on fatwas, or edicts, by senior clerics who say women at the wheel create situations for sinful temptation.

Women tried to defy the ban once and paid heavily for it. In November 1990, when U.S. troops were in Saudi Arabia following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, some 50 women got behind the wheel and drove family cars. They were jailed for one day, their passports were confiscated and they lost their jobs.