Traffic in China

IMG_9266Before going to China, I had heard about how bad the traffic was there. People had told me that traffic lights were considered optional, speed limits were nonexistent, and driving on the right side of the road was not mandatory. When I went to China, not only did I discover that all of those things were true, but that it was actually worse than I had imagined. Cars, scooters, and bikes all share the road, and any one of them had the right-away over pedestrians making an attempt to cross the street like a real-life game of Frogger. Horns are honked constantly, warning the other nearby vehicles in the bumper-to-bumper traffic that they’re about to get cut off. Cars came inches away from hitting our bus, taxi rides felt like amusement park rides, and everywhere we went, we saw cars casually parked on sidewalks. I remember our tour guide saying that the most popular kind of jam in China is a traffic jam.

In America, there’s a stereotype that Chinese people are terrible drivers, and you’d think that after what I saw and experienced, this stereotype would be reinforced in my mind. However, my experiences with traffic in China actually had the opposite effect: I now think Chinese people are incredible drivers. Maybe they seem bad in the United States because they aren’t used to all of our traffic laws, but in China, they are great drivers. I would not last 5 minutes driving there. The traffic jams are usually caused by the overpopulation in many of the cities, and with so many people, Chinese drivers must do whatever it takes (i.e. run red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road, etc.) to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. They drive recklessly, but the do it well. To my surprise, I did not see one car accident the entire time we were in China. Thus, after this experience, I have a newfound respect for Chinese drivers.

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