Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Poor Fella

You gotta feel sorry for the guy who wrote the driving handbook for China. He (she?) did a brilliant job -- the book outlines all the logical driving rules, right-of-way laws, and safety maneuvers. Alas, it appears that all that hard work was for naught, because I'm QUITE SURE that besides me, no one has read that book.

Ignorance of right-of-way is just one of the annoying things I deal with on a daily basis. Add to that varying degrees of flat-out rudeness, arrogance, illusions of immortality, excessive speed, cell phone use, I-pod use, and daydreaming while driving, and you have a recipe for chaos...and other bad things.

In the driving handbook that no one has read, it says that if you get your driver's license through fraudulent means, you will lose your license for life. Yet I don't know anyone who got their licenses the old-fashioned way (which is to take the exam without cheating). I'm not saying these people do not exist (I'm sure they do), I'm just saying I haven't met one personally.

The above photo is taken in a bike lane, which is to the right of the main traffic lanes. This is one of the rare occasions in which there are no cars or pedestrians in the bike lane. Sometimes the bikes can't get through the bike lane because cars decide to use it as a parking lot.

The guy on the bike in the foreground has earphones in his ear.

China, I love you, but I'll love you more when the whole traffic thing gets a little more polite, you know what I mean?

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