China Segment

I may live to regret writing this, but I’m calling out the police of Shanghai, of all China. Everyday more people needlessly die in this country because the police do not enforce the law. Traffic accidents are easily preventable, yet they do nothing. Cars, motorcycles and pedestrians break laws right in front of law enforcement officers with no fear of the consequences. People who have no business driving a vehicle are given licenses. The result is that one of the safest societies in the world to live has become lined with scenes of death and injury. The police are negligent in their incomprehensible failure to stop this. They know their failure to act costs lives. I would have said they are criminally negligent except for the fact that the numbers of traffic accidents and related deaths has been going down by about 10% per year recently. The stats show improvement, but when I walk out the door and see flagrant violations of the law everywhere, people getting knocked to the ground, near crashes everywhere, I see senselessness.

China leads the world in traffic accidents and deaths. Of course it has the largest number of people in the world, but let’s face it – not everyone owns a car, and hundreds of millions in the countryside will never own a car or motorcycle. China admits up front that its death rate on roads is worse than anywhere else. Here are the numbers I dug up – if anyone has a place where they’ll all assembled neatly, please let me know.

2001: Accidents 754,919; Deaths 105,930
2002: Accidents 773,137; Deaths 109,381
2003: Accidents 667,507; Deaths 104,372
2004: Accidents 517,889; Deaths 107,077
2005: Accidents 450,254; Deaths 98,738
2006: Accidents 378,781; Deaths 89,455
2007: Accidents -around 320,000 Deaths 81,649
2008: Accidents 265,204; Deaths 73,484

In 2004 the WHO noted that 600 people died in China every day from traffic accidents, and an estimated 45,000 were injured daily. It was the leading cause of death for 15 to 45 year-olds. This doesn’t have to be so. According to the WHO: “Reducing road injury is not difficult… road crashes and injuries can be effectively prevented through implementing simple strategies such as safety belts for adults and children, legislating and enforcing speed limits and drink driving statutes, and increasing the visibility of vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. (See here.)

To put some of this into perspective, in 2006 there were 89,445 deaths in China due to traffic accidents, while there were only 48,433 in the United States, where there are far more cars, though far fewer bicycles and scooters. The horrible flooding during 1998, a massive catastrophe in China, only caused 3,656 people to die. Yet every month far more people die needlessly from traffic accidents and it is not labeled a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’.

A study done in the journal Traffic Injury and Prevention claims in its abstract:
“There was an apparent increasing trend of traffic-related injuries in Shanghai from 1987 to 2003 with the rate of growth in motorization. The average rates of annual increase are 3.59% in fatalities (from 7.78 per 100,000 population to 14.18 per 100,000 population) during the period. Pedestrians were the most common type of victims (29.6%), followed by bicyclists (25.1%), and motorcyclists (24.1%).” This means that it’s insanely dangerous just to walk to the bus or ride your bicycle or motorcycle to the store. Combine this with construction sites and the danger from walking past them (from falling materials and the crap we have to breathe) and Shanghai starts looking worse than Johannesburg, Rio or Detroit. However, the study’s prediction that the trend would continue and the number of deaths and accidents would keep increasing has not come true. 2010 will be a safer year than 2003 even though there are more cars and more people in the same amount of space.

This past year the media in China focused on a two-month long campaign against drunk driving and overloaded trucks (yes, they still do mass campaigns in China), and recently the big issue has been large trucks such as cement mixers driving too fast, not shoulder checking and plowing into bicycles, cars, etc. That’s all well and good – these problems need to be fixed. Large vehicles think they own the road and unfortunately act like it. And drinking too much at dinners and then jumping into the car are maybe as common here as back in red-neck country. But these are still small parts of the larger issue. Driving skills in China are horribly low, driving culture is only in embryonic form, and the police, for the most part, stand idly by and watch the carnage.

The problem isn’t just cars. Actually they obey most ‘major’ traffic rules like stopping for red lights (though it varies). The worst drivers are those with motorcycles and scooters, and of course the notorious bicycles. All of them seem to figure they have their own laws. All three of them come up on to the sidewalks, and not just to park. They run red lights, go the wrong way down streets, use roads they’re forbidden to, never EVER yield to pedestrians, and generally make intersections a laughable sight. Stop lines mean nothing to them. It’s like some minister traveled to the West, saw these lines on the streets, ordered them to be painted on the roads in China, but forgot to explain to everyone what they meant. And seat belts? Only drivers seem to wear them. (And I remember when that was a new enforcement of an old law back in 2003.) Passengers rarely do, and many taxis don’t even make them available in the back seats. I’ve seen mothers with no seat belts on, holding their babies on their laps in the front seat - delusional, ignorant mothers who think that somehow in an accident they could actually protect their child. Instead they will crush it against the dash. Can’t we stop this?!

Pedestrians can be assholes in China too. They jaywalk constantly, and because of this Shanghai gives older people without work (laid off by state-owned companies when they were made private?) jobs as traffic assistants. Their job is to stop pedestrians from jaywalking, but also from standing in the bicycle and car lanes instead of the sidewalk. That’s right, the Chinese Cletus needs to be told to stand on the sidewalk. They literally stand two or three feet from the curb, impeding traffic and making vehicles swerve, particularly on roads like Beijing Road in Shanghai, where there is no bicycle lane or shoulder. ‘Peasants from the countryside,’ you say? No, no. Some of these people are young and educated. But true, the majority are scratching themselves, spitting, and picking their ears with their keys. It fits. But back to traffic.

China didn’t even have traffic laws until 2004. Until that time there were simply traffic regulations, said by Wikipedia to be vague with light punishments. Much of Chinese law until the 1980s and 90s was fuzzy until you dug into the regulations. But in 2004 the new Road Traffic Safety Law took effect. It is a modern law, modeled on those of other countries, with higher fines, point systems for drivers and compulsory vehicle insurance. It gives rights to pedestrians, as in almost all cases, an accident between a motor vehicle and a person is said to be the fault of the driver. It was a large step forward.

As for the right of way, the comments in Wikipedia almost made me laugh out loud – funny because it’s true I suppose. I’ll only quote that “most Chinese drivers’ understanding of this concept is markedly different from those in societies with a strong tradition of the rule of law.” This is a rather light assessment. Chinese drivers are generally selfish and inconsiderate, especially the older ones. They come from a generation of people who knew that if you weren’t first in line for food and waved you ticket or money in the face of those dispensing it, you might not get any. They are the same people who push to get on buses and simply don’t give regard to others in the way. This type of driving style naturally causes problems. Fortunately, younger people in China are generally not like this. They have much better driving manners and are likely to let you in if you’re trying to merge, or even stop to let pedestrians cross.

Also when an accident occurs, neither party will move their car. They stand and argue about who was wrong, then bargain on compensation. Mr. Wiki continues: “when a collision occurs between two vehicles it is almost always resolved by the payment of money by one party to the other on the spot, with or without any admission of fault. After initial indignation or recalcitrance, one or both parties will demand financial compensation. It is supposed that either party considers the socio-economic status and occupation of the other, and the desirability of saving face. Eventually one party will relent, and they will bargain down to an agreeable amount of compensation.” Foreigners in this kind of situation are at an extreme disadvantage, since they are assumed to be well-off, and also assumed to have little knowledge of Chinese law. Essentially a shake-down ensues, with the police often involved to get their share of the cut. This is why I don’t drive in China. All of this haggling can take time, and naturally for drivers in China, they have no regard for the traffic glutted behind them. The situation is getting better as police are encouraging drivers to take photos with their cell phones from various angles, then get the cars out the way if possible.

For a pretty good article on driving and owning a car in China, see here.

So what are the police doing to stop all of this nonsense? I see them sometimes giving out tickets, but more often than not it appears that the drivers are trying to talk their way out of it. Why would the cop even listen? You saw them breaking the law, most traffic laws are strict liability types, so give them the ticket and tell them to shut up. Most of the time I see police officers being reactive, not pro-active, excepting of course the recent campaign on alcohol and overloading, when they had checkpoints set up at various points of city. Maybe we need more police and fewer of the useless neighborhood security guys. Police are more expensive and need more training, to be sure. But we need people out there with authority, not those pathetic traffic assistants who have nothing more than a whistle. Those guys stop pedestrians from stepping off the curb, but don’t even blink as scooters race past through red lights.

I’d like to say that decent, strict, tough driving schools could be the answer. It would help with cars, particularly the new drivers who are so terrible and cause so many accidents. Hell, it would be nice if all drivers had to go through the whole program, instead of paying to get their license like a student of mine claimed she did several years ago. However, what about the bicycles and scooters that have no licenses and apparently need none? Everyone in China learns to ride bikes as kids, and they learn bad habits from their parents. They swerve into car lanes, don’t shoulder check and generally just get in peoples’ way (along with riding so slow I can almost walk as fast).

What is the solution? A total crackdown? Shanghai alone would need 100,000 cops on patrol to even try. I try to imagine early street scenes in America with drivers all over the place, poor roads, immigrants right of the boat walking down the middle of the street, horses, carriages and carts mixed in and I get a sense that things here in China can change too. But those anglo-gentlemanly manners the U.S. was initially blessed with are not present in China. It’s push-push, me first driving style. The typical response from locals is that “China/Shanghai has too many people. That’s why traffic is bad and we have so many accidents.” Bull. That excuse is used for every ill in the country. It’s lame and out of date. Shanghai has a state of the art road system that is constantly being upgraded. But I see roads like Hengshan Road where there are two lanes of traffic going both ways, no bicycles allowed, yet a lone rider goes on to the side of the road, then cars in the right-hand lane swerve around it into the left lane, the cars in the left lane swerve into the on-coming lane, and the on-coming traffic must squish together and try to avoid pedestrians errant kids running out on to the roads, drivers who stop suddenly or lane-surf. ARRggghh. It makes me grind my teeth just thinking about it.

More work needs to be done, and the police should be spearheading it. People need to be educated, no matter how stubborn they are or how much they protest. Enforce seat belt laws, have mandatory baby seats for young kids, enforce laws and regulations for bicycles and scooters. Enforce, enforce, enforce. China has enough laws. Time to fulfill of Jiang Zemin’s promises of the 1990s that China would be a country with the Rule of Law. I still don’t see it. I understand this is part of a larger quest in a country that very recently was ruled by whim. The police are up against hundreds of millions of people who either don’t know the laws or refuse to follow them. They need support, training and funding. But so far they’re dropping the ball.

I can’t stand it. I’m serious, I don’t want to be like Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” and suddenly lose it. I already walk through cross walks aware of scooters, bikes or motorcycles coming at me, yet I don’t give way like the other pedestrians if I have the right of way. I make them stop, then yell at them that they’ve got a red light. I’ve had a few bump into me, but nothing bad enough to injure me yet. I just don’t see how this can be happening all over the city non-stop. Where are the police? Get out of the dumpling shop 饺子店 any start policing!

Finally, I’m going to leave a link to another page on this website where I’ve copied the sections of China’s Road Traffic Safety laws that I think are most pertinent to the post here. There are interesting differences between the laws for motor vehicles, non-motor vehicles such as bicycles and scooters (defined in article 119), but many similarities. Essentially they all have to follow traffic lights. Wouldn’t know it from walking around on the streets, would you? Battery-powered bicycles (what I call scooters) are not to exceed 15 km/h (article 58). Haha to them, that’s awfully slow. There are many interesting provisions about accidents, liability, and the powers of police officers.

Drive safe, and keep that head on a swivel when you’re crossing the street. You can’t trust anyone to stop, no matter what the laws are, the sign says, or the light indicates.
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