While traffic fatalities are slowly but surely declining in the western world, a new report claims that drivers in China have an adage towards traffic incidents: "it is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure." But why do the Chinese resort to such motorized barbarism?
From Business Insider to the Malay Mail Online, news outlets around the world have recently published stories about this horrific phenomenon. You could almost say that in this kind of situation, drivers in China are driven to intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit. Again, what in the hell possesses the Chinese drivers to be so cruel towards mere pedestrians?
Put simply, money is the root of all evil. If a driver hits a pedestrian without killing him, the driver is obliged to pay compensation to the pedestrian for the rest of his life. The Slate gives a perfect example of how much a driver has to pay if the pedestrian lives to tell the story to the police and/or court: "one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care."
If the pedestrian is killed, the driver only has to "pay once, like a burial fee," that ranges from $30,000 to $50,000 in compensation. Scandalous, I know. I contacted a friend of mine that lives and works in China, and he told me that the Slate's shocking story isn't just yellow journalism in the vein of William Hearst's publishing empire. As hard as it is to believe, this kind of happenings aren't just urban legends.
The top 3 causes of mortality in China are strokes, coronary heart diseases, and – surprise, surprise – road injuries. Another shocking fact is that nearly half of suicides around the world occur in China and India, but this doesn't concern us right now. The mortal road incidents in China are backed up by security camera footage of drivers that intentionally drive to kill, lots of footage to be frank. Furthermore, some drivers happen to put their cars into reverse then run over the poor pedestrian to certain death, regardless of age.
This story is all the more shocking because when autoevolution visited Shanghai earlier this year for the auto show, we haven't seen any type of road incident, be it a crash between two vehicles or one between a car and a pedestrian. But we've identified, from the back seat of old Volkswagen Santana taxis, a smog-laden and heavily congested Shanghai, full of drivers that don't know how to merge or switch lanes.
The following photo gallery is testament to our experience in the automotive landscape of Shanghai. Regarding the attached video, be advised that it contains graphic images of a fatal crash in China.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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