Ethics of Chinese Traffic
The seat of a bike affords a panoramic view of another aspect of life in China. Let’s call it “the Confucian approach to traffic control.” Laws do exist governing one-way streets, red and green lights and the sanctity of the sidewalk from vehicular incursion, but their application is haphazard, to say the least. An American or European driver feels that if he or she is not exceeding the speed limit or otherwise in technical violation of the laws of the road, any grace shown to pedestrians, bicyclists or other motorists is strictly optional. Chinese drivers are much less concerned with the letter of the law, and seem to view driving more as a continual process of negotiation, which will hopefully result in the satisfaction, more or less, of all parties. This extends to the occasional accident as well, conflicts which are often settled with a quick application of cash rather than an appeal to the police or judicial system. As haphazard as it all sounds, I have found Chinese drivers surprisingly gentle to cyclists. A frequent injunction to novice urban bikers in the US is to “pretend you’re invisible.” Chinese drivers seem much more inclined to yield to riders (at least big, sweaty white ones with helmets), and though I still find myself after several years riding in China entirely unprepared for what any given motorist is likely to do at any given moment, I feel safer and more generally deferred to as a bicyclist here than I ever did in the US or Hong Kong. Chinese motorists seem to suffer less than American ones from the sense of wounded outrage at discovering a bicycle sharing the road with them, perhaps because most people driving a car in China in 2010 were sitting five years ago where I am now, perched on the saddle of a bike.