The road craft and sheer decency, or lack thereof, of Nanjing drivers is back in the headlines after an elderly man was knocked down and killed by a vehicular crane while he was using a zebra crossing at which vehicles are obliged to stop for pedestrians.
The tragedy occurred on 26 October. That’s when the victim began to cross the Nanjing street at a pedestrian crossing when traffic was relatively light.
As the man crossed, as was his legitimate right, a Buick GL8 business car slows to permit him to do so. In the opposite direction, an intercity bus ignores the man and goes through the crossing. Surveillance camera footage at the crossing, which has been released by The Paper, then shows the vehicular crane charge over the crossing, running over the man in the blink of an eye.
Emergency services on the scene a few minutes later pronounced that the man had died instantly. The footage, which some readers may find distressing, can be seen via this link.
The background to the tragedy is that a few years ago, Nanjing’s traffic authorities introduced a regulation stating that motorists must stop for pedestrians using crossings that are not controlled by lights. If the crossing is controlled by lights, the pedestrians are obliged to wait for the green “man”.
In this instance, the surveillance camera footage clearly shows the pedestrian crossing to be of the former, uncontrolled variety; i.e. all vehicles must stop for people looking to cross the street.
However, the bigger issue is that it can be very difficult for motorists to know whether or not a crossing has the lights with the red and green “men”.
At rush hour, in winter, in the rain and the dark, sensible drivers need to be scanning the road in front of them for bikes without lights, suicidal pedestrians wearing black and any number of other hazards. It’s asking a lot to also think they have time to look left or right in advance of every crossing to try to see if there are lights to control pedestrian movement, particularly if those lights might be obscured by signage, trees or a bus.
Yet, in other cities it is less of a problem. Indeed, the phenomenon appears to be more or less unique to Nanjing. Back in 2019, the Director of Communications for a local five-star hotel spoke with The Nanjinger, commenting, “I really don’t understand Nanjing people at all. In Hangzhou, drivers all stop way back from the crossing”.
Perhaps by bringing to light the seriousness of the incident, the many surveillance cameras around us in China may in fact be a blessing that could enlighten Nanjing drivers as to their obligation to give way to pedestrians at zebra crossings.
