The traffic system in most Chinese cities are frighteningly chaotic, and Kunming is no exception. Several major intersections have no control whatsoever. Red-light running is endemic. Drivers will do anything- anything- to avert gridlock, including driving on the sidewalk or down the wrong way of one-way roads. When you add in silent electrical bikes, motorcycles, trucks, mianbao che, and all other contraptions that pass as vehicles, Chinese roads resemble a Hobbesian nightmare where survival is by no means guaranteed.
Yet for all of its flaws, Kunming’s roads seem oddly safe. I cycle on them without reluctance, even at night. Every so often, I have to slam on the breaks. Once or twice, I’ve bumped into pedestrians, vespas, or other small vehicles. In a city with such a large population crammed into a small area, these incidents are by no means unusual.
The very lack of rules on the roads in Kunming, in a way, explain why they’re so safe. Cars violate traffic rules all the time. Pedestrians jaywalk with impunity, bikes go against the grain of traffic, and everybody everywhere do what they’re not supposed to. Yet there’s one rule that everybody follows in China: try not to hit other people.
Keeping that rule in mind makes everyone drive reasonably slowly. The scenes I witness in northern California, cars zipping by at high speeds, don’t happen in China. In California, people follow the rules so assiduously that any deviation seems extraordinary and a cause for panic. In China, nobody drives well, and for that reason there’s a certain sense of security amidst the madness.
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