Why did the chicken cross the road?

 

Crossing the street here is really different.  Sure, just like at home, pedestrians have the right of way.  However most Americans would at least LOOK to see if a car was coming before confidently walking out into a busy street.  More importantly, if there is a car coming, Americans will generally not walk until they are sure that the car will in fact stop and let the person walk.  Not the case here.  Not only do most of the people in this town not even look for cars, but if there is a car only 10 feet away and they DO see it, they will still step out into the road.  And I'm not talking about at a crosswalk, but in the middle of the block, at night when the car can barely see you.  This evening we went out to dinner with a friend, and on our walk there our friend pointed across the street to the restaurant we were going to.  So he boldly steps out into the road although there were several cars that were quite close.  I of course squeal "xiǎo xīn" (be careful) as I grab his elbow and pull him back to the curb. His response was to pull me into the street and say "no, it's okay.  The cars will not hit us."  And they don't, most of the time.  But China has this fatal combination of very careless drivers, and very careless pedestrians.   Both parties break all the rules and drive / walk wherever and whenever they want.  It's pretty maddening to see it happen on a daily basis, everybody barely squeaking past each other with inches to spare.  And it often ends badly.

The most recent scandal here is a school bus accident that happened near Beijing.  A minibus with 9 seats carrying sixty two preschoolers and two adults to the local preschool crashed head on with a coal truck and crumpled like a tin can. Yes, I said SIXTY TWO kids in  NINE seat van.  (These crazy overcrowded school vans are actually very common as schools are seriously under-funded ) 20 kids died as well as the two adults (driver and teacher) and all the rest of the kids are hospitalized with serious injuries, several of them in critical condition.  This sounds like some crazy, tragic accident, right? Well tragic it is, but crazy it is not.  Not when you realize how people drive here, I am not at all surprised.  Wall Street Journal reports that the van was driving on the wrong side of the street when it hit the truck head on.  Why was it on the wrong side of the street? Because it can, and most people do whenever they can.  I have taken many a taxi ride where the driver will choose to pass a car on the wrong side of the street even though there are open lanes on the RIGHT side of the street for passing.  And even after they have passed the car they may continue to drive on the wrong side until they feel like moving back into the right side.  In fact I was in a taxi once, on the wrong side of the street, and when an oncoming car saw we were coming in their lane, they also switched to the wrong side so we passed each other each on the wrong side. WHY?? aahhh it just rattles my brain trying to figure out their driving habits.  WSJ said this:   "Crashes have become a feature of Chinese life as safety habits have failed to catch up to the rapid growth in road traffic amid the buoyant economy." 

I guess it makes sense, China is a massively populated place and has really only been a developing country for about 30 years give or take a few,  so they are trying to catch up to the rest of the world so quickly and taking a whoolleeeee bunch of shortcuts at the expense of the safety of their people.

 You can read the article about the bus crash in WSJ here - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203611404577041370547204042.html

and another article here...http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/11/16/china-bus-crash.html?cmp=rss