The National Day spike in traffic leads inevitably to more accidents on China’s roads. One incident in our own Jiangsu Province captured by surveillance cameras clearly shows the dangers associated with expressway exits, where many an accident takes place.
It was at around 7 am on 3 October when the accident occurred at the exit for the Sutong Bridge service area on the G15 Shenyang-Haikou expressway a little south of Nantong in Jiangsu.
It was at this point, where the expressway is three lanes wide that a white saloon car with a Shanghai license plate, that was traveling in the outermost left lane, suddenly veered to the right with intent to exit the highway to the service area.
Colliding violently with a brown SUV that was on the car’s immediate right, the impact propelled both vehicles into the expressway guard rails beside the entrance to the exit’s slipway.
As a result, the saloon vehicle was thrown into the air, rolling several times before finally coming to rest.
The following police investigation revealed that after first striking the vehicle in the centre lane, the saloon driver attempted to bring the car back into the outermost lane, but that it was already out of control.
Video surveillance footage of the crash has been published on the Jiangsu Lifestyle Labs (江苏生活实验室) official WeChat account.
The accident has brought some of the inherent dangers with China’s expressways back to the fore of public debate. Slipways, or ramps, account for just 2 percent of China’s expressway mileage, yet fully 50 percent of expressway accidents occur near or on slipways.
China’s high-speed traffic police have researched the statistic in depth and found the five main causes of such accidents to be vehicles that stop near slipways to observe road signs; vehicles that suddenly change lanes to enter the slipway (as in this case); vehicles using slipway deceleration lanes for overtaking; vehicles traveling too fast on slipways; and vehicles which having passed the exit, stop and reverse along the expressway to access the slipway entrance.
Police remind drivers returning from the National Day holiday on China’s roads to exercise extreme caution around expressway exits.
