Traffic, Beijing

Traffic is already a big problem with the growing number of vehicules and a real danger to one's life...

... do pay a lot of attention when crossing the streets - there are lots of cars and innovative drivers there...

I would recommend to visit Beijing in winter time as the pollution is really bad when the air is hot!!

Our tour bus had a little crash with another car when we were going to the Great Wall.
I don't know where is the worst place to drive: China or Mexico City... honestly I knew it would happen any time soon during our visit to Beijing so, watch out!

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that's really crazy, i'm speechless..all i can say..Try not to get killed crossing the streets!!! and i was thinking that Moscow's drivers were the craziest and most impolite, even in Almaty the drivers whom are not following rules at all are nice at least! ok, i'm trying to give the idea what it's like...you are crossing the street on the green light of course and at that exact moment you see lots of cars coming at you from all the possible directions..unfortunately human anathomy doesnt allow you to have full overview of the situation around...ah, just try to survive.. i did...!:)

As I was leaving it was evident that a lot of residents were eagerly swapping their pedal cycles for motor cars. Goodness knows what this will do to the already overcrowded roads. It was a nightmare travelling across town and the simpilest/shortest of journeys could take hours. Give yourself plenty of time to get to your destination, particularly the airport if you've got a connection to make.

Everything is true what people here on VTs wrote about traffic in Beijing.
My small contribution is this photo. I tried to cross street, it was green light and I had to stop couse light change and vehicles couldn't wait for pedestrian to finish crossing. Always estimate how much time you have on green.

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I found it strange that many tourists who came to Beijing did not tell which taxi is a legal one. Especially when they went out of the Summer Palace,they took a 'taxi' and shouted to the driver:'read the meter'.The driver replied:'yes,yes,read the meter'. But how can they read the meter when the 'taxi' is a illegal one?

In half an hour when I was there, at least 4-5 groups of foreign tourists got on illegal taxi. I did not know what happened to them at final,but at least I know they would be charged more.

So, as a local, I decided to tell you which one is legal in Beijing.

you can tell the legal ones from the illegal ones as below:

1. the color of the legal taxis is special.

2.the number of the legal taxis is special. It begins with ‹žB XXXXX. The Chinese '‹ž' here means Beijing. 'B' here means tourist cars, including tourist buses and taxis in Beijing.

3.the lamp of the legal taxis is fixed on the top of the taxis.

Do you remember those?

The driving in China is positively frightening. The drivers are not only careless, they take tremendous risks seemingly without regard to the consequences.

If you're not driving, (and I wouldn't) there's not much you can do to ensure your safety. Drivers there were making extra lanes out of nothing, coming so close to our vehicle that they hit our rear view mirror. We saw 15 accidents in one day which was only about 3 hours of driving, one of which was only about 200m in front of us on a 110kph highway. It could have been us if the timing had been seconds different. A car had left the opposite side of the road, crashed over the barrier and landed on its roof on the roof of the car travelling in the same direction as us. It turned out that at least 5 people were killed that day.

The picture shows you how close the traffic is. The drivers take no notice of the road markings and create additional lanes.

There are plenty of people in Beijing and driving can be an adventure. I was glad to have our driver Mr. Zeung. He was a very daring professional driver who would use the whole of the road. Cars honk their horns just to let you know their there not necessarily in offense of poor driving like in the states.

Mr. Zeung would drive on the shoulder and easily cut in when he needed to and there were no complaints from the other drivers that I saw, they just accepted it whereas this would incite road rage back home.