Comments welcome by email. I don't care if you disagree with me but name-calling and cussing are not acceptable. Comments that are just rude and not relevant will not be posted.
Vehicle fatalities don't get attention because they occur in ones and twos. If people died at the same rate but in one horrifying crash a month that killed 3,500 people, then Mr. Bush and Congress would speedily make auto safety a priority and save thousands of lives a year. As Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has said: "If we had 115 people die a day in aviation crashes, we wouldn't have a plane in the sky."
China's not like the United States, where cars have been a way of life for decades, and pedestrians and drivers have established practices. In China, the one rule is: no one stops for anyone else. Pedestrians don't stop for cars, and cars don't stop for pedestrians.
I recall a story from many years ago about a young man who went to traffic court, fighting a ticket he got for running a stop sign.
"There is no stop sign at that intersection," he told the judge, and showed a picture to prove his point. The judge was about to let him off when he happened to look at the back of the photo and saw that it was property of the local newspaper.
"You work at the paper? Which department?"
"Photo retouching," the man answered, and had to pay his fine in full.
Road Hazards!
