Road Kill
Part of the Travel section of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s Practical A–Z
You won’t be driving yourself around Běijīng. While there was briefly a possibility for those arriving at Capital Airport with a return ticket and an international license to pick up a rental car, the page on the Běijīng Traffic Management Bureau’s site detailing the regulations is now blank (www.bjjtgl.gov.cn/english/english_PAGE_KEY/index.html). Self-drive rates and deposits are anyway astronomical, and the real rules of the road bear no resemblance to those actually written down. Driving is only for residents with long experience, and even then not for the faint of heart.
Few, whether pedestrian, cyclist, or motorist, obey any of the rules of the road, or behave in a way that common sense would suggest increases longevity. A search of www.youtube.com will produce plenty of dashboard camera and traffic camera footage as evidence. Cars charge up bike lanes and across pavements to find parking spaces, scattering pedestrians. Bicycles go both ways in bike lanes and both ways on the margins of roads, many now electrically powered and silent. Pedestrians ignore footbridges to form groups that edge out into traffic, the cars parting and flowing around them.
The numbers of new cars joining Běijīng’s roads are now restricted by a lottery for a limited number of new plates.
To gain a licence a Běijīng residence permit is needed, there’s an exhaustive written test which few pass first time, and a road test none of which remotely prepares drivers for real life on China’s roads where large numbers of other drivers have instead paid bribes to avoid the training (which otherwise costs around ¥5000) and the test.
The main rule of the road is simply ‘I’m bigger than you, so out of my way.’ Perhaps better than being big is to drive a vehicle with white plates beginning with WJ (indicating high cadre level and for instance access to the Zhōng Nán Hǎi government compound) or other Chinese characters in red indicating a military vehicle (see Plate Spotting). These vehicles routinely ignore traffic signs and even police instructions. Some drivers are more equal than others.
Officers routinely obtain military plates for use on private cars or to auction illegally to civilians, and these are also widely faked, enabling ever more to ignore signs and get off scot-free. New military plates were introduced in 2013 partly to avoid exhibitions of military excess, with vehicles worth more than ¥450,000 forbidden to carry them.
On-line commentators (the ‘human flesh search engine’ — see Internet and Other Digital Resources) quickly found multiple vehicles carrying the same military plates.
In 2013 the rules were changed to make an amber light the equivalent of red, with a requirement to stop or gain points towards disqualification. But all traffic rules are routinely broken if no one’s watching, and despite the increase in traffic cameras. Vehicles turning left will charge across oncoming streams of traffic as soon as the light changes, keeping nose to tail to prevent those with the right of way getting through.
Currently vehicles in Běijīng are kept off the roads one working day a week depending on the last number in their plates, which has led to families with sufficient funds simply to buy a second vehicle. The last number on plates is often obscured in some way, often with a shiny CD disk, to fool traffic cameras.
What this indifference to regulations amounts to is death in large quantities, although the authorities routinely lie about the figures. The World Health Organisation considers the figures for Běijīng alone to be out by 100,000 per annum, and nationally the figures compiled by the Health Ministry are often three or four times higher than those that the Ministry of Transport publishes. Injuries from road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for people 15 to 45 years old, and are expected to reach 1300 deaths each day by 2020.
Minor accidents are commonplace. Vehicles are left in the street where they come to rest, causing further coagulation in traffic over a wide surrounding area. Drivers step warily from their vehicles. square up to each other and perform their grievances to the court of public opinion that instantly convenes, and frequently has a lot to say.
Cars are always assumed to be in the wrong if a cyclist or pedestrian is involved, however suicidal the behaviour of the weaker party may have been.
There may be long waits for the police to arrive, widespread detention of all parties if anyone has been hurt, and a foreigner will almost always be in a weak position in any dispute with a Chinese.
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