

The politics of traffic lights

Slamming on the brakes

Drivers push back against a government directive

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Readers' comments



Living in China, I have never noticed any "rules" of driving being followed and laws ... there are no "laws" in China, there are only "rules" of which none are followed. Why people do not understand this has always baffled me: this is China, your not in Kansas anymore.


As an ex-Canadian cop who has lived and driven in China for many years, and miraculously survived, I would say that Kunshun Laowai's comments are right on the money. Traffic law enforcement in China is passive rather than active. Moving offences, unless they are caught on camera, are ignored. There is no highway patrol. The most common and most dangerous offences are changing lanes without signalling and failing to yield right of way to other vehicles and pedestrians. The idea of education and enforcement is unknown. It is my experience many Chinese drivers cannot function without a cigarette in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. I predict that these new laws will be ignored and not enforced. The scariest problems are that hardly anyone uses seat belts and, worst of all, car seats for children are almost non-existent. I can't understand why Chinese, who love children so much, overlook this no-brainer.

Yang Cong Tou in reply to peterlaoshi

My Chinese wife routinely resisted putting our daughter in a car seat in Beijing, despite the fact that she is an engineer! I bought a western car seat and dragged it all the way back to China to find that she would drive around BJ with her mother holding the baby. No amount of rational persuasion could change her mind. As much as they love children and go to such lengths to invest in them, how they can be so careless about something as simple as a car set. None of our upper-middle class, highly-educated friends even owned a car seat. They all had $1000+ baby strollers, but never a car seat. Go figure.

I brought my 6 month old twins to Shanghai to live for a few months and brought the car seats from Canada. I think I used them once. I would have liked to use them more but it was too difficult to do so as cab drivers often impatient. Really shocking to me to see how careless people were - especially with children. Before you chastize me for cultural insensitivity, I saw a baby tied to the back of a motorcycle with a string. Wish I had taken a picture.


Could be worse - could be Massachusetts, where a red light means "go anyway" and a yellow light means "accelerate." The old joke about the driver slamming on the brakes when he sees a green light (because he doesn't want to get hit in the intersection by all the drivers who are running the red on their side) is often all too true. Maybe we could arrange for a temporary exchange and locate some zealous Chinese officials on the Eastern Seaboard for a while and see what happens?


I don't think that there are some differences of the official's attitude between today and the past. Nor do I believe that poses any change of Chinese politics in the new government. We should not be optimistic about what is happening in China for the challenges that China is faced with is so hard to handle.No caution about the politics in not unnecessary.


The Chinese police is fixing the traffic issue with a wrong approach or attempt. However, people need to admit that there are way too many traffic violations in all forms on roads in China. pedestrians and drivers do not stop at red lights, electrical bikes behave like a pedestrian with a 30 speed, intersaction is too wide for a 3 second yellow light, right turn car fight with people crossing the road (I never able to cross the road during a green light), too many cars, taxi stops randomly, bad roads, bad drivers and on top of everything is the traffic jam everywhere all the time.

Everything changed too fast in China. Both the government and the public don't have enough time to adept to the uproar. Imagine that lots of the middle age drivers today probably never sit in a car 30 years ago. It is difficult time.

Perfectus in reply to cvmango

edit for you:
Chinese motor bikes behave both as a car and as a pedestrian....

They honk at pedestrians while it was green for them, so they can run the red light....
- Or they would accelerate into the pedestrians and force them to yield...

Left turning in an intersection on a red light is normal... Whether it means blocking other direction's right of way...

The situation is far worse than it has been mentioned here, and I'm talking about this happening in Shanghai.

Kunshan Laowai

This is a typical government response: see a problem, pass a law. But the problem in China has never been people "running" yellow lights. It is people running red lights, and that continues apace. The real problem is that, for all the talk of China being a "police state," it's actual police-persons are among the world's laziest. They show up at rush hour and then retreat to their offices, only venturing forth to respond to traffic accidents. During the interim, police rely on an elaborate system of traffic cameras. The problem, of course, is that the locals all know where these cameras are and drive/speed accordingly. For the Chinese government to effectively control traffic, it first needs to change its law enforcement from reactive to proactive, even if it means a little less KTV time for the officers involved.
And, of course, China faces a huge problem that Western governments don't have to worry about: 600 million scofflaws on electric bicycles who randomly turn into traffic, run red lights, and create all sorts of traffic mayhem, all secure in the knowledge that, if they are hit, it is automatically the car's fault. That is a huge problem that the government has done nothing to address so far.


The "bad" traffic light rule that should be changed in China is "Right Turn on Red".
In the entire world, it seems only China and U.S. generally allow right turn on red (in Canada too but not as generally allowed as in U.S.)
So many fellow posters @#$% on anything "Western" (actually they mean U.S.) applied onto China, why don't they propose to get rid of such lousy and risky traffic rule?

Perfectus in reply to Kunshan Laowai

Pedestrians also have the right of way...
Americans just won't honk at the pedestrian why cross the light...

Chinese will honk, or depending on the attitude, barrel in or accelerate to force the pedestrian to stop cross on their green light.


Any Chinese driver who has spent time in California, where making the unprotected left turn on a yellow light is a civic duty far more important than serving on a jury or voting, would be very confused by this directive.


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