I was almost killed today. Or at least close to spending a considerable amount of time at the pleasure of the Nanjing health authorities. I had made the dreadful mistake of stepping out onto the pavement. A delivery rider (one of the blue ones) was careering straight toward me, his eyes firmly fixed on his phone and the next order information therein.
It was impossible to get out of the way; all I could do was pin myself against the fence and breathe in deeply. In a hair breadth of a moment, he looked up and slammed on his brakes while pulling as best he could to the left, passing me by just another hair breadth. He did not stop, of course, but did manage to say, “不好意思” (excuse me) in a tone that was actually believable.
Yet the pavement is question is more than just a pavement; it’s a “path” to be more accurate, a designated “walking zone”. Somewhat ironically, the path is intended for local residents to get some exercise and improve their well being. My well being was close to being terminated.
Now there is some justification for e-bikes using the pavement on account the alternatives are just too cluttered. Take the road near Baijia Lake in Jiangning District for example; the one that sweeps around between 1912 and Golden Eagle.
This is supposedly a three lane road. But during busy periods it is reduced to the centre lane only, with both the lanes on either side and their adjacent pavements given over to the parking of e-bikes.
While there can be no question that a good proportion of those on two electrified wheels in Nanjing are god-fearing, law-abiding citizens, it’s nevertheless obvious that many e-bike riders assume the right to behave in any way desired, oblivious (or perhaps not) to the fact that the law of the road which applies to cars so too does to e-bikes.
Hence to us pedestrians, who frankly are not having a lot of fun these days.
Now I don’t have an e-bike, which is strange when you think about it, because judging by the state of Nanjing’s streets today, there surely must be more than one for every last human being.
Us pedestrians were also among those to die in the fire of February this year in a Nanjing apartment building that killed 15. It was a tragedy that put the situation in perspective. Indiscriminate behaviour by e-bike owners puts lives at risk. Seen one of those videos the police love to trot out of accidents at intersections when an e-bike rider runs a red light and ends up under a car?
While the result of their actions was indeed their own fault, the mental anguish felt by the (usually) innocent car driver is never going to leave them.
It’s this kind of self endangerment that’s really been getting the authorities’ goat. Hence a giant publicity campaign which began about 5 years ago in an attempt to educate as to the dangers of improper e-bike behaviour. The 3 (and now 4) biggest offences unnecessarily occupying traffic police’s time these days are:
Not Wearing a Helmet
To its credit, Nanjing is a safety-oriented city and so this directive has gone far from unheeded. In fact, a press conference held on 5 August, 2020, revealed that e-bike riders in Nanjing had adopted the then-new mandatory helmet-wearing law to the tune of 90 percent. The exception appears to be the school run, when ironically, they are arguably most needed. But then the penalties for not doing so are far from persuasive; when caught by law enforement on patrol, that would be a warning for the first offence, a ¥20 fine for the second and a ¥50 fine for the third. Hey, a helmet costs more.
Disobeying Traffic Lights
During that unmentionable period in China from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s, the populace was encouraged to treat a red light as green, because red is the colour of action, of revolution. Half a century later, many seem not to have got the memo.
Riding in the Opposite Direction
The surest way to save a few minutes in the morning, and to end up in hospital, as most car drivers will only look left when turning right at an intersection. This very publication’s accountant discovered this some years ago, to then spend 3 months in bed at home while the wounds around the steel pins in her leg healed.
[There really ought to be a further sub category, reserved for e-bike riders who manage to flout all three of these safety principles, simultaneously.]
FUN FACT
Said law made a significant number of people millionaires, almost overnight. When the law was enacted on 1 June, 2020, only 30 percent of e-bike riders bothered to wear a helmet, meaning a market worth ¥10 billion had, at the nod of a helmet, been created. Paying ¥10 or so to acquire the product in a wholesale market, hawkers were able to score a 700 percent markup in their passing on to vendors.
Less widely known is the illegal modification of e-bikes phenomenon, into which authorities have been conducting sporadic checks on e-bike retailers here and there, but rarely individual owners. The phenomenon commonly includes the addition of a canopy supported by shaped aluminum or flexible plastic poles, often to the extent that the e-bike in question now resembles a tank (just put a rocket launcher on there too and be done with it); and more commonly, and worryingly, removing the factory-default battery and replacing with something more powerful that is an enormous fire risk.
In the wake of the fatalities in that fire, Nanjing authorities decreed that all residential communities over a designated size place a loud hailer at each of their gates with a message on repeat. “Don’t take your e-bike home to charge”, “Don’t take your e-bike’s battery home to charge”, etc., were its cries.
Ignored they were, as this correspondent witnessed one evening as his neighbour did just that. But being the Karen that he is, said offence was reported to residential community management, who promised to “reeducate” the individual concerned. The loud hailers fell silent soon thereafter.
NOT SO FUN FACT
In a desperate attempt normally reserved for adults shown explicit images of road accidents at highway service areas, primary-school age children in Xuzhou were visited by police in June of 2023 to be given a Powerpoint presentation featuring photos of accidents involving e-bikes on which were their peers and associated grandparents, as a means to curb reckless behaviour.
Then there comes the scary part, revealing the consequences of two-wheeled reckless abandon.
On 25 September of this year, a woman with her son on an e-bike in Suzhou believed the road’s motorised lane to be the more convenient option. On the other side of the road was a Honda saloon whose driver felt the urge to turn across the double-yellow lines demarcating the road’s two carriageways. Oncoming was a Tesla whose driver was unfamiliar with the vehicle’s braking system. The ensuing carnage was the result of both cars spinning out of control and into the e-bike.
Now I may have an ever-increasing amount of scratches on my car at the hands of e-bikes, but that woman’s son no longer has a mother.