In LA

I saw a second Beijing car accident yesterday. It was a near identical situation to a car accident I wrote about a month ago, but with a taxi substituted for that accident’s cement truck. If I were to draw a conclusion from these two accidents, it would be that drivers need to pay more attention when merging and turning. And though these accidents don’t look terribly hazardous, the lack of attention on the part of the driver that they highlight ought to make those of us on bicycles really nervous.

On the plus side, the central government appears to be taking steps to increase automotive safety. Before I left I was thinking of writing a post to complain about the lack of seat belts in Beijing taxis. At the time, most taxis lacked seat belts in the back seat, I think the drivers actually removed them. When I sat in a taxi a month ago that had seat belts in the back, as soon as I started fastening the belt the driver informed me that wearing a seat belt in a back seat is unnecessary. But yesterday I was in three different cabs, and they all had readily accessible seat belts for all of the car’s seats. On the freeway from the airport, I also noticed a large sign informing drivers to maintain a safe distance from the car ahead of them. Very cool.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 6:34 am and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.