Driving is not so bad. It's fun to complain about traffic, but by global standards it's moderate. If you avoid certain neighborhoods (e.g., Karama, inner Deira, or JBR/Marina in the evening) and travel on Sheikh Zayed Road and other major highways, it's manageable, especially during the day. I would avoid driving to the Dubai Mall or Mall of the Emirates in the evening (go to Dubai Hills Mall instead). And, by all means, avoid going to or from Sharjah during rush hours, but your needs south of the airport should avoid that.

It resembles a spread-out American city like Los Angeles (not as big of course nor as bad), Washington, or Atlanta. Not nearly as bad as the scrum of Cairo or the gridlock of Istanbul or Riyadh. The more suburban parts of the city, like from the airport to Jebel Ali, are fairly smooth, with some exceptions such as Hessa Street. Parking is decent though you have to register for to pay for meters by SMS if you're going to be parking on the street (or get someone to pay for you by sending an SMS with the car plate number). Road construction won't create bottlenecks like it did a decade ago.

All of that said, taxis and Uber/Careem are quite convenient, especially if you have to move from meeting to meeting and want to avoid having to look for parking. You generally won't wait long for Careem. If you drive yourself, it's true that you fill find quite aggressive, discourteous, and inept motorists compared to the U.S. or Europe, and it's easy to get lost because the roads are over-engineered and unforgiving. You have to remember that in Dubai (1) there are a lot of broken one-way streets and there are few uncontrolled left turns except on the smallest streets, meaning often long stretches followed by U-turns, (2) lots of service roads parallel to highways with non-intuitive entrances and exits and pointless barriers, meaning it's sometimes hard to get back on the main roads and trouble if you miss a turnoff, (3) certain neighborhoods with very limited access (e.g., trying to get into or out of Karama or Al Barsha are ridiculous), and (4) very long traffic signals, which can be good or bad depending on your luck though generally make for inconvenience. Unlike in America, where a gas station or big-box store parking lot will have two or three entrances on multiple sides, in Dubai there will usually be one entrance and one exit, with unnecessary one-way traffic flows. Similarly, parking lots of large buildings or adjacent strip-mall stretches are generally unconnected. It's all just needlessly heavy-handed and complicated (just like society as a whole).

For your amusement, here are two typical examples of getting from point A to close-by point B, in the aforementioned examples of Al Barsha and Karama, respectively.