This is giving me horrible flashbacks to driving during Chinese New Year when we were living in KL. It took several hours to go a few miles because for some reason everyone had to stop at one specific rest stop and had parked on the highway to do it once the off ramp was jammed. The only functioning "lane" was the far right shoulder. The rest had literally been converted into a parking lot.
Yeah, scrolling through on google earth I found a couple of traffic jams, and people seems WAY too willing to just park their cars and get out for a stroll. I found more than one place on a major highway where there was a substantial backup, and when you find the head of it you can see that whatever was causing the problem has cleared, but since along the length of the jam people had gotten out of their cars and are wandering around it's clearing up about 10x slower than it would in the US.
So just straight up crazy volumes, questionable engineering, AND people who have no qualms about just parking their car and leaving it on the highway? Doomed.
I wonder how their car accident stats are compared with here?
DH goes there for business. He says it is insane. His company won't allow him to drive, he has to have a driver. DH says the car versus pedestrian accidents are so frequent that the ambulances can't keep up with them. If it's a fatality, the body is pushed out of the way and might get picked up in a few hours, might be longer. DH also told me that the police officers act as judges in traffic accidents because otherwise the courts would be backed up for years. The cop shows up, he listens to both sides and decides who is at fault. The cop assesses what he thinks the fine should be and collects it on the spot. If you can't pay, you go to jail.
DH just told me last week there is a greater than 50% chance we'll get sent to China within the next 2 years for a 3year job assignment. The other possibility is Australia. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let it be Australia!
Post by WanderingWinoZ on Oct 9, 2015 9:15:20 GMT -5
was it china or india that we had the article recently about it's better to kill somebody in a crash than injure them? THus, allowing people to turn seemingly minor fender beneders & crashes into deadly ones???
Ok, finally caught up with coworker. He's actually from Singapore, BUT his sister lives in Beijing. Apparently what is pictured is exactly what you thought wawa. It's a regular road that flares out to 50 lanes and then narrows down again.
Interestingly enough, he says that his sister says that the infrastructure vastly improved due to the Olympics, including water and sewer. (random fact for the day)
was it china or india that we had the article recently about it's better to kill somebody in a crash than injure them? THus, allowing people to turn seemingly minor fender beneders & crashes into deadly ones???
I'm pretty sure it was China. Yeah, seems like that's not going to help the traffic situation, either.
That is terrifying. And it was scary enough for me to go from a year of driving in Iceland to NYC. The 12 day traffic jam story gave me waking nightmares. I can't even. And if some of it was on a bridge? Forget about it. I can't let myself go there lol.