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Q: Why are Chinese drivers so bad? Is it only due to a lack of ability, or perhaps another reason?
As a cyclist who regularly risks an early demise by riding in and around general traffic in China, I'm frequently amazed at how incompetent Chinese drivers are.
Why is this? Can the only reason be a lack of ability, or are there other reasons?
I'm frankly amazed there's not more carnage on the roads.
What kind of training do license holders actually have to go through?
Fair dinkum,..the skills of drivers in China are atrocious!
Fingers crossed I live long enough to read some possible answers to this question!
11 years 33 weeks ago in Health & Safety - Other cities
1. Training is really bad. The theory has a strange amount of questions about what to do after an accident, what the fines are etc.
2. The driving teachers are extremely bad. I've seen them make students reverse on bike paths to do a 3 point turn and then drive against a one way arrow.
3. The availability of driving instructions. Word has it that there can be a really long wait to get a driving lesson
4. The availability of people who are willing to fake driving tests
5. The lack of enforcement, there is no consequence, but death, to poor driving.
6. The selfishness that means people don't care as long as they get to where they need to go
7. All people older than 25 in this country have not had parents who owned cars as a kid, they have never seen how driving was done from the comfort of the back seat. 15-20 years ago, if you saw a passenger car on the streets, it was likely to be driven by a top dog who would probably not think to slow down to prevent killing people.
8. Education is poor. People do not accept the fact that seatbelts save lives and such very normal things. Seatbelts is an invention that in China only provides a means for avoiding getting fined for not using it. And certainly back seat passengers don't need them.
9. People tend to always take the shortcut. Go to any park and see where the path bends, the grass will be worn off because people literally always cut corners. They do the same in cars, at junctions, going the wrong way around roundabouts etc.
10. The general lack of appreciation of life. So what, you killed another human, there is so many all over the country. I certainly don't need to slow down when I pass a group of children playing on the side of the road, they are not my kids anyway.
11. People in this country think they know right even though their foundation for thinking so isn't there
12. Parents don't teach children to follow rules, but to break rules to get ahead of all the other suckers.
1-4 can then be combined into people being able to buy fake driving licenses without having ever taken any instructions
andy74rc:
13. Lack of any form of respect toward anybody not belonging to the family.
Scandinavian:
It's just not a great answer, it is a very sad answer. You can overlay this answer to any topic in China and the bottom line boils down to a society that has been destroyed by the revolution of it's culture and left a wasteland where now all generation have come to think that what is the norm is right. I don't buy into the "China is special" narrative. China is extraordinarily common. Even the size cannot be an excuse, telling people to get their driving down is not more difficult if you 13 million or 1.3 billion people.
TBH I don't think they drive early in life. In America we have Drivers Ed. I learned to drive when I was a freshmen in highschool. Here you won't see highschool kids driving or learning to drive which can be the result of poor driving later on in life.
The earlier you learn the better you'll be and that's whatever it is you do not just driving.
Lack of experience.
Not so long ago, urban roads will filled with bicycles. And I'd guess before bicycles, donkeys, horses and oxcarts. With the embrace of capitalism over the past 40 years or so, more and more people can afford cars. They buy them for the same reasons any other nationals in countries worldwide buy them: conveyance, comfort, status.
But. They can't drive those wonderful Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, SUVs, etc. that fill the roads of my city on the coast because they've been driving for only a few years. (And some drivers buy their licenses without having to go through training. We all know that.)
I have over 40 years of driving experience and know how to drive. What I would give to get behind the wheel of a Ferrari and take it for a spin. But I can't (despite the perception that I am a rich foreigner). Just have to conform to using public transport to get around. I miss my Jeep back in the States. And my old-school Raleigh Roadster 3-speed. Sigh.
So, yeah. Lack of experience.
3rd gear, brake, then shift to 5th before accelerating again, I wouldn't call it lack of experience. I'd call it lack of logic thinking. Both happens often, as we all know.
I know several people who passed their driving tests by paying someone off - that's one reason. Secondly, I think there's an inherent "everyone out for themselves" mentality here which also makes itself shown on the roads here. It's no different from the hoards of people pushing and shoving their way onto a train or bus all at the same time. No-one stops to let anyone go ahead first. Thirdly, I do suspect that the training schools here don't do a good enough job. One of the keys to being a good driver is confidence but I see so many people - especially women - who look scared behind the wheel. That leads to bad driving.
https://www.scmp.com/video/china/2170393/boy-drives-toy-jeep-busy-highway-escorted-parents
Future bad driver for my grandkids to ride in his taxi.
