I received my provisional licence more than 7 years ago, and also my 17th birthday present from my parents was payment for some driving lessons. Due to having little desire to drive at the time, and then not needing it while at university, and later being too scared to do it in China; it's only now that I feel driving is something that is needed in my life -- especially considering the ridiculously high cost of public transport in the UK.
I've been having quite an intensive course of lessons so far, and in many ways I am quite enjoying the driving experience, but I have noticed I have some kind of in built hesitation about other road users -- I wonder if my time in Wenzhou played a part in that?
There is certainly a rather large difference between driving in the UK and in China. In Wenzhou the traffic is usually so consistently busy that the speed is generally quite low. In the UK, with there being considerably less people, the speed is generally faster, which could also lead to more fatal accidents. But, there is a big but here, the following of law and order on the roads is almost completely ignored in China (really I'm only commenting on Wenzhou and Hangzhou here as I have much less experience with other cities). I saw all sorts of collisions in my time in Wenzhou, from the very minor to the very severe. For that, I certainly admire my girlfriend, Kimi's success of driving on the roads. I think I'd be too scared to ever drive there (as you can see below).
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| One reason you won't catch me driving in Wenzhou (taken from my bedroom window) |
4 comments:
I heard that in Italy people drive like crazy ;-)
But - yes - generally speaking you are right about China: the main rule is the lack of rules.. haha
I've heard similar things about Italian driving too Crystal! Maybe it's because of all the scooters clogging up the roads, lol.
Ah, I remember the long process of getting a driver license in Belgium. And ridiculously expensive since driving school was obligatory. Compare that to California (where I live now) it's so simple and cheap.
And yeah, driving in China is a whole different ball game. While on vacation in Beijing, I saw once a guy driving backward on the freeway because he missed an exit.
That made me laugh IS (although it shouldn't!). I'm not at all surprised by that, I think I might have seen the same thing before.
I've heard that countries like France, Belgium, Holland etc all have a very high standard of driving compared to other parts of the world. You must be qualified to drive in any country in the world!
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