Chaos!
Sometimes it really sucks going outside. Not because of the overwhelming heat, not because of the risk of falling into a sewer (this happened on my first night here, luckily enough my foot struck more or less solid ground about a metre below ground level), but because it means having to confront the thousand-headed hydra that is Chinese traffic.
A few decades ago, cars in the ownership of common people were a rare sight. Nowadays it's quickly changing and the government has implemented a kind of bidding system to keep the number of cars from escalating out of proportion. I'm not totally sure how it works but when new license plates are made available people are invited to bid on the right to use them. The road network along the coast is highly developed and could probably swallow several more cars, so that's not the problem, at least not yet.
The problem is that people have a tendency to drive like idiots.
Driving against oncoming traffic just to overtake a slow truck is not considered weird at all, just like using every means of telling other motorists that you're going to squeeze by is fair game. Taxi cars don't even have seat belts in the back seat. The countless scooters and other (mostly electric) motorbikes are used by as many as three persons at the same time, a small percentage of them donning helmets.
Crossing the street is usually quite safe but travelling by car or, worse yet, scooter can be a horrifying experience for someone coming from a country where there's no need for a "use of signal horn prohibited" sign in residential areas. Right now I'm still undecided as to whether people are really good or really crappy drivers. So far I haven't witnessed any accidents but looking outside the window I'd probably see at least a handful potential incidents waiting to happen in the following five minutes.
Keep in mind that so far my experience has been limited to "smaller" towns in well developed areas. Coming up next week however is a trip to Shanghai, where there's supposed to be somewhat of a traffic problem...
A few decades ago, cars in the ownership of common people were a rare sight. Nowadays it's quickly changing and the government has implemented a kind of bidding system to keep the number of cars from escalating out of proportion. I'm not totally sure how it works but when new license plates are made available people are invited to bid on the right to use them. The road network along the coast is highly developed and could probably swallow several more cars, so that's not the problem, at least not yet.
The problem is that people have a tendency to drive like idiots.
Driving against oncoming traffic just to overtake a slow truck is not considered weird at all, just like using every means of telling other motorists that you're going to squeeze by is fair game. Taxi cars don't even have seat belts in the back seat. The countless scooters and other (mostly electric) motorbikes are used by as many as three persons at the same time, a small percentage of them donning helmets.
Crossing the street is usually quite safe but travelling by car or, worse yet, scooter can be a horrifying experience for someone coming from a country where there's no need for a "use of signal horn prohibited" sign in residential areas. Right now I'm still undecided as to whether people are really good or really crappy drivers. So far I haven't witnessed any accidents but looking outside the window I'd probably see at least a handful potential incidents waiting to happen in the following five minutes.
Keep in mind that so far my experience has been limited to "smaller" towns in well developed areas. Coming up next week however is a trip to Shanghai, where there's supposed to be somewhat of a traffic problem...
posted by Erik at
14:29
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