Pat's Journal

Walking with my feet ten feet off of Nanjing

If you've never been in a car outside the U.S., you would find driving in China a unique experience, and not in a good way. I was giving this topic quite a bit of thought as I rode back to the hotel tonight.

First of all, you probably would not drive yourself here for two reasons:

1) Most foreign companies (mine included) will provide a driver to get you around the city because of liability issues. If you drove yourself and had an accident - very likely to happen - you would be held responsible for the damages and injuries, regardless of who was at fault, because you are the foreigner and have deep pockets. It's cheaper to hire a driver and avoid all that. The cost of a driver is very reasonable here, and they can navigate the traffic better than you can.

2) Taxis are widely available and cheap. The initial fee is 11 RMB (about $1.50 US) and most rides cost less than $10. There is also a very good Metro train system that is expanding rapidly.

My company uses a driver because we have 4-5 people in town at one time that need to go from the hotels to the plant. Our driver probably would have his license taken away if he drove the same way in the U.S., but here he fits right in. He rarely signals his frequent lane changes, blows the horn and flashes the headlights when someone is in his way, regularly travels 20 MPH above the speed limit, comes up dangerously fast and close behind slow-moving vehicles before slamming on the brakes, and blows through red lights if no traffic is coming. He is not alone in doing this, however. Taxi drivers also drive like this. I would be very surprised if cars' brakes lasted more than 15,000 miles before needing to be replaced.

Other things that annoy me about Shanghai drivers include no right-of-way for the pedestrian. If you're walking across the street, you need to look all ways around you, whether the traffic light is red or green. Cars will make turns and honk at you if you're in their path, even in the crosswalk. Cars also will never stop at a red light or stop sign if they're turning right. They presume that the driver in the cross traffic will yield to them. Most times they are right.

This kind of traffic behavior applies to all vehicles - buses, dump trucks, electric scooters, bicycles and tricycles. Many times as a pedestrian I had near misses from scooters and bicycles because they're so quiet. Pedestrians, scooters and bicycles often get caught in the middle of heavy traffic while crossing a road or making a turn, and many times try to cross expecting that the vehicles will stop for them. It's a miracle more people aren't hurt. Many are, though. A sign at the Shanghai Auto Museum said that over 100,000 people die yearly in traffic accidents in China, the highest rate in the world. I don't like the traffic behavior here, but I am more tolerant of it now.

There are also some other peculiarities with Chinese roads, even on the newest ones. On most multilane divided roads in the U.S., at an intersection, a left-turn lane goes off to the left, and a right-turn lane goes off to the right, while the through lanes go straight ahead. Here's how the Chinese do it:



Notice that to turn left, you just go straight ahead, and you turn right from the right through lane. (No need for a right-turn lane since no one stops to make a right turn.) Both through lanes shift to the right at the intersection, then shift left after the intersection. With all the lane-shifting going on, how can this be safe?

Other peculiarities include a U-turn lane at some intersection, signaled separately. What's unusual about that? It's NOT the left-most lane, it's the second-to-left most lane! That means that a car making a U-turn crosses in front of the cars in the left-most lane, which are either going straight ahead or making a left-hand turn. Also on many roads where there are bridges, the transition from bridge to level road is too short, creating a mini speed bump, especially when your driver is traveling 20 MPH over the speed limit.

There are a few things the Chinese traffic engineers do differently that are good. Green lights flash a few times before changing to yellow, giving you a warning, and a yellow light appears with the red light just prior to turning green. On the newer roads, a separate divided lane is provided for scooters and bicycles, which is good, but some bicyclists choose to ride on the car portion of the road anyway.

Traveling on the Shanghai roads has been a wild ride. : - )

Labels: China, driving, traffic

posted by pat @ 7:40 AM