Anarchy on the highway

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, Beijing
Saturday, Mar 13, 2004, Page 16

Transportation police officers at the central traffic control center in Beijing. PHOTO: AGENCIES

For the aspiring motorists taking the driving exam at a government building not long ago, one true/false question probably seemed a touch unusual: If you come upon an auto accident and find a motorist lying unconscious on the road, should you shake that person violently to wake him up?

The next question expanded on the theme: If you come upon an accident and find a motorist lying unconscious on the road, and if that person's internal organs are also lying on the road, should you pick up the organs and put them back inside the person?

The answers, presumably, are false and false.

Yet if the questions seemed bizarre, the authors of the test, wittingly or not, were providing fair warning that China has become one of the world's most dangerous places to drive.

The booming Chinese economy has established China as the world's fastest growing car market, a trend that has flooded the roads with first-time drivers and contributed to a fivefold increase in road deaths in the past two decades.

Traffic in China's capital city is causing headaches for the government. PHOTO: AGENCIES

The roads are often terrible, the drivers are often worse. Traffic safety laws are roundly ignored and, until this year, were badly outdated.

"China's not like the United States, where cars have been a way of life for decades, and pedestrians and drivers have established practices," said Zhu Xiaomei, 29, a Beijing TV producer.

"In China, the one rule is: No one stops for anyone else. Pedestrians don't stop for cars, and cars don't stop for pedestrians," she said.

The anarchic, wacky quality of driving in China might almost be comical if not for the horrific daily carnage. Last year, more than 104,000 people were killed in traffic accidents, roughly two and a half times more deaths than in the US, even though China has far fewer vehicles.

PHOTO: AGENCIES

The wrecks are often grotesque. Last Sunday, a busload of migrant workers careened off a mountain road in central China. Twelve died and 35 others were injured. A week earlier, a head-on collision involving a bus in southwest China left 11 dead and 20 injured. During the recent Lunar New Year holiday, one crash claimed at least 40 lives.

PHOTO: AGENCIES

"Now, with more private cars, the roads are chaos," said Wang Qiang, 34, who began driving a truck 10 years ago.

So intimidating are the roads that some new drivers even attach small window signs that caution, "Novice Driver."

"Novice drivers are the worst," said Tian Zhisheng, 60, as he walked his bicycle against a current of cars in northern Beijing.

"They'll drive right up onto the sidewalk and run you over," he said.

Tian added, "I should put a sign on the back of my bike, `I'm Old, Don't Hit Me."'

China is furiously building highways and roads, but the transportation infrastructure is still woefully inadequate. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai, better designed for bicycles, are choked with traffic. Beijing alone has 63,000 taxis. One silver lining to the traffic is that the death rate is lower in cities. The cars are moving too slow.

Li Dan, an official with the Chinese Center for Disease Control, said that the majority of fatal accidents occur on more rural roads, often on the periphery of cities, where motorists travel faster. Often, these accidents involve passenger buses ferrying migrant workers or others from the countryside into the city. Last year, official statistics showed that China had 41 recorded accidents in which more than 10 people died.

"The most serious problem is between the urban and rural areas," Li said.

He added, with a touch of understatement, "There are a lot of things that need to be improved."

Within the past year, the Chinese government has taken steps to address the problem, though no one expects an overnight cure. Li noted that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) has set up a ministerial-level committee to improve road safety. The government also has approved new, nationwide traffic safety laws, scheduled to take affect in May.

The Road and Traffic Safety Law, among other things, will provide for road signs to mark schools and hospitals. It also, for the first time, will establish that pedestrians have the right of way. Before, a pedestrian run over in an accident was often found at fault. The law will also set severe penalties for hit-and-run accidents, a major problem.

Still, changing the prevailing culture will be difficult, and enforcing those changes even more so. By one estimate, there are only 200,000 traffic officers in all of China, a country of 1.3 billion people.

Violations abound. Some flatbed trucks are so overloaded that their tenuously strapped goods list precariously to one side. Last year, a Chinese newspaper reported that one man made a healthy wage by photographing violations in order to collect reward money from the police.

Beside violations, ambulance services are spotty even in major cities, and people are often reluctant to call, since in the past the caller has often been responsible for the bill (The new traffic law changes this).

Nor has the average Chinese driver taken defensive driving to heart. Motorists routinely try to take left turns into four lanes of oncoming traffic in Beijing. Other motorists usually regard such a driver as a lead blocker and follow tightly behind in a vehicular wedge formation. On the outskirts of Beijing, many drivers, particularly in trucks, run red lights with abandon.

If there is any good news, it is that the number of fatalities fell by about 5,000 from 2002 to last year. The bad news, though, is that a possible reason for the drop was last year's SARS outbreak. For about two months, people simply stayed home. The roads were practically empty.