that’s whacked

pick one or the other, but not both

Sunday, Sep 26. 2004  –  Category: ChinaBlog

a) Taxi b) Personal safety

You may have one, or the other, but not both. Which would you choose?

Chinese taxis are always a fun experience. You feel like you’re in an arcade game, swerving, dodging, honking the horn, and coming within inches of other cars/people/bikes/large immobile objects.

What I love are the seatbelts. Chinese law requires the front passengers to wear seatbelts. I’ve seen many a taxi driver pull the shoulder belt down and fold it over and leave it draped over their lap, so it looks as if it’s buckled to a policeman that would happen to glance through the window, but in reality it’s not even buckled. If they’re gonna go to the trouble of all that, why not just buckle the damn thing?

Last time I was here (~3 years ago), I had taxi drivers tell me I didn’t need to buckle up when I reached for the belt. That cracked me up. Everytime I reach for the seatbelt in a Chinese taxi, I think of that memory….. until this trip, where the other day, I reached back for the seatbelt and felt…. nothing. The guy had actually gone to the whole trouble actually removing the rear seatbelts on his car.

I don’t even know what to say about that…. I mean, it’s one thing to say “oh, you don’t need to wear it”, it’s another to actually go about and actively prevent me from using something that should be saving my life (and I’ve seen Chinese car accidents with people going through the windshield, and it ain’t pretty).

The only thing I can think of is that they actually think it’s better to be thrown through, instead of being restrained in the event of an accident. Go figure.

How do you say “I don’t want to die” in Chinese? “Wo bu yao si”?