| OK, guys, I'm sorry but you're all missing the point. Traffic is a cultural thing. Those who quote the rules are missing the point - what's important is knowing which rules are important and which are not, and that's a cultural issue. Maybe some of you come from countries in which all rules must be followed exactly, but that's not how either China works, or the U.S., where I am from. If you stand on the street furious because nobody is following the rules (yes, I have done this and still do sometimes) THE PROBLEM IS YOU, not the 14 million people around you who have different expectations. Of course I wish Shanghainese didn't turn right on red without stopping, and especially that they would stop at zebra crossings - this makes me crazy. I also wish Brits would serve beer cold, Spanish restaurants opened before 9 pm, and Japanese people heated their buildings. But the deal is, you live in someone else's country, you have to accept their norms. The norm here is, traffic rules can be broken. If you came to America, drove 55 miles per hour in the left hand lane and started yelling at everyone else for going too fast, people would think you were a nut. And that's what people think when you freak out about people running red lights in Shanghai. Try to get some perspective. Jianshuo had a great post about this some months ago, talking about how after driving in the U.S. and getting used to following the rules, he came back to Shanghai and was a BAD DRIVER because of it. When you follow the rules instead of the norms, you become a danger because you are not acting as people expect. BTW, the incident in Italy was reported as posted here in the Shanghai Daily. P.S. I am a planner too. Planners don't set traffic signals. Widening the narrow streets would be a terrible idea - you wouldn't solve the traffic problem (no streets are wide enough to handle everyone driving in a high density area) and you would make it impossible to walk around. There is too much of this in Shanghai already. Thanks all. |
Reasons of Bad Traffic in Shanghai