I have lived and worked in China for over 2 years, I can tell you 100% these people are fucking crazy! No joke! Road sense = zero! Go to crazy china it will blow your mind! I work In Shanghai and its a little less crazy to drive here, as they do have "some" rules "sometimes". Leave the big cities and enter Crazy China!
Driving in China is NOT crazy
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: Friday, 23. May 2008
Search YouTube for "driving in China" and up pops a string of videos all with the same general theme "crazy," "insane" "total disregard for rules" and worse. But is it really all that bad?
Take a look at may of the videos posted on YouTube of busy intersections anywhere in China with a seemingly chaotic mix of traffic.
To the North American eye, used to simple traffic, simple rules and lots of space, it looks impossible and disorganized. A China-bound American tourist might take one look at this and understand immediately why rental cars in China usually come with their own driver.
However, upon closer scrutiny, the 'chaos' is not so chaotic. The Chinese themselves are used to this more informal relationship with rules and their expectations of other road users are vastly different from the North American expectations.
As journalist Ken Wills points out in an article on the Boston.com web site, Chinese driving habits appear to be "a direct extension of China's bicycle culture, whereby every move is a calculated negotiation among throngs of cyclists flowing at roughly the same speed and in the same direction."
It's a good point. Not being used to the power and speed of automobiles, road users in China may have pretty naive ideas about drivers abilities to see what's happening around them and engage in the same kinds of "negotiations" that cyclists and pedestrians engage in.
To the western eye, many of these negotiations seem naive to a frightening degree. In this next video witness the blind faith of pedestrians as they wander across several lanes of speeding automobile traffic.
All things being considered, it's wise to take the almost universal advice of foreigners who've visited China and hire a taxi or rent one of those cars with a driver included. One Shanghai rental outlet advertises a Toyota Corolla for 550 CNY (about US$ 80) per day. That includes the driver's salary. Beijing Central Chaufeur offers about the same rate. At BCC you can rent a luxury Mercedes S350 for US$ 380/day or less for rental periods over 1 week. ShangCar offers a Mercedes MB100 at about $95/day.
According to BCC's web site, renting a car in Beijing without a driver isn't worth the effort. For a start, says BCC, "By local law, foreigners who want to rent a car on their own need to find a local person who holds a permanent Beijing residential ID as a guarantor. This is a great hurdle for all visitors." Add to that congested traffic and language problems and the consensus seems to be it's just not worth the effort.
China is not a signatory to the U.N 1949 Convention on Road Traffic and consequently does not recognize the International Driving Permit.
Taxis are cheap in China and they're everywhere in the major cities. However, there may be language problems (most drivers don't speak English), difficulty finding addresses, poorly trained drivers and difficult negotiations over price. The rent-with-driver option potentially resolves all those problems.
Safety
China has a major problem with road safety and much of this may have to do with the relative inexperience of so many drivers, and also the relative inexperience of other road users with high volumes of automobile traffic.
In the past decade automobile traffic has exploded. One report estimates that in the past year about 5 million new drivers entered the road traffic system. Research conducted by the Medical School of Jinan University in Guangzhou indicated that traffic accidents have risen from about 6,000 in 1951 to some 770,000 in 2003.
A CNN report cites current figures of 600 fatalities per day more than 200,000 per year, and almost double the 2003 rate. "To drive in China, says the report, is to risk some of the deadliest roads on earth." With some 2% of the world's cars, China has 15% of the world's road fatalities.
More:
For a collection of interesting links go to our DRIVING IN CHINA links page where you'll find links to blogs on driving in China, how to get a license in China, U.S. government site on living and working in China, and even some fun stuff such as spoof tests and a Lonely Planet forum.
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Hendriksen,
ED,
Robert, you're right. This one was focusedon cars but the bicycle/pedestrian ones are even more fascinating I just found an amazing one at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agI5za_gHHU&NR=1 ...It's an intersection in Jaipur, India, I believe. The level of cooperation and accomodation here is unbelievable. Most people I know would not even try to get through this one.
Robert,
The first video you chose is not a very good example of chaotic driving patterns. It is just a jammed up intersection, and one driver chose to sneak around, and got hit by a driver that clearly was assuming the right of way.
There are better examples of chaos if you look for them.
PS: Interestingly, the driver that illegally tried to sneak through the intersection appears to be white.
