Crazy Drivers

When I was little my mother would frequently comment that the Chinese were crazy drivers.  She would see some car being driven erratically and she’d confidently say, "I bet that driver is Chinese.  They are terrible drivers”.  And frequently, it would be a Chinese person and this would just confirm her thoughts.  And my siblings and I would call her a racist and tell her to stop stereotyping people and she would just laugh at us and point to the car, going to wrong way.  “Look at him, he can’t drive.”

Well, now that I have been here for three months, I am eating my words.  But it isn’t that they can’t drive.  They are good drives.  They just don’t have any rules of the road. And because life is so crowded here,  everyone does what he can to get from point A to point B with minimal effort. They drive the way the crow flies.

Let’s start with no rules of the road.  There are no speed limits.  All turns are acceptable (regardless of what lane you are in). Drivers may stop and park anywhere, even in the middle of the street, if necessary. There are few to no traffic lights in many of the major intersections.  There is no concept of right of way or yielding.  There is no police force to manage any traffic problem.

In the rural village, there are no traffic rules at all because so few people have cars.  They drive electric bikes with carts attached to them.  In the city, the only traffic rules imposed on them are an occasional traffic light.  But few people pay attention to them.  I was once in a taxi and the right turn, left turn and straight ahead arrows were all red.   It appeared to me as if the opposing traffic had the green light and this traffic was moving and my driver just cut right through them and kept going.  No one honked at us. And our light was red the whole time.

The road outside the university has six lanes.  There is a lane on either side of the road which serves as an off-road for local traffic. The two side roads accommodate drivers from both sides and if two opposing  vehicles are coming down this road at the same time, in opposite directions, the smaller vehicle gets out of the way.  And if necessary, he drives up on the sidewalk to get out of the way.

Then there are concrete barriers which separate these two lanes from the main lanes.  The main part of the road has four lanes with a yellow line down the middle.  Traffic generally tends to travel according to our ideas but at any moment during the day, there are three lanes going one way and one lane going the other way.  And those in the wrong lane offer no thoughts of driving on the correct side of the road when confronted by oncoming traffic.  Eventually, traffic goes back to two and two lanes but then it merges again back to three and one and then back again.

Then, there are no traffic lights so no one comes to a complete stop.  Everyone just sort of glides through an intersection.  Add some motor cycles, taxi drivers, pedicabs, push carts, pedestrians (most of whom are college students), a few unattended babies and the intersection becomes a game of chicken in the road.  To add to all of this confusion, there is a bike rental stand at this intersection.  For 50 cents, anyone can rent a bike for the day.  So I have seen college students get on a bike for the first time in their lives and just headed straight in to this traffic mess.

A month ago, two college students were struck by a drunk driver.  Both of the students were seriously hurt and had to be hospitalized.  The young woman suffered some serious head injuries and may have been in a coma for a day or two.  The driver was not charged with any crime because he is a party member and well connected.  The young woman’s parents were still trying to get the driver to pay for the hospital bills but I was told that they were not meeting this obstacle with any success.

Today, I sat in the front seat of the bus, right next to the driver.  We were on a four lane highway. I looked down for a moment and when I looked up again, I saw four lanes of traffic headed right towards us.