Sidewalks Are Just Narrow Roads

[Martin Hash]

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The ironic thing about China's traffic is that though they built wide lanes for cars, separate bike lanes, and nice sidewalks, swarms of electric motorcyclists do not observe any kind of normative safety, or courtesy, and there seems to be no prohibition against them riding anywhere they want, at full speed, endlessly honking as if that excuses their wildly dangerous activity, while talking on their cellphones. No one wears helmets or uses their headlights at night. In fact, the only 2 helmets I saw were obviously Western children riding behind their obviously Western parents who were not wearing helmets. I watched a motorcycle with two people run right into the back of a walking woman then honk as if she was causing the problem. I watched a car hit a motorcycle & the car's driver jump out to check if there was any damage to his fender; he had to step over the fallen motorcyclist. And while I was taking a picture of a motorcyclist coming right at me, another one swiped me from behind. I can't imagine this kind of behavior in the States: my goodness, somebody would be getting clothes-lined in short order then kicked when they went down.

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