Funny test for crazy drivers!

A colleague sent me this very funny application: my best was the second attempt.. very far from US pilots and genius level!!

I wonder if Chinese drivers do the same test and score like 10 minutes!!! Traffic in China is amazing, as I observed already during my very first visit. But what it is even more amazing is that there are not so many accidents as one would expect! (“one” from abroad, I mean!!)

This is what I call great awareness, the kind of feeling I wish to have when I practice Aikido, especially multiple attacker (like Endo sensei showing how to move during sannindori shomenuchi). When Chinese people drive the car they seem to know everything that happens around them before it actually happens..

This is the feeling an external observer has.. but the truth is actually the complete opposite (and you realize that when you learn a bit more about Chinese society): Chinese drivers just do not care about the others!!

Of course, they care about their own car, so that they would avoid always an accident, to not destroy an important symbol of social status, as the car is. But when they do any maneuver they put their own interest as only thing that matters, not caring about traffic rules, other cars and especially anything else lighter than themselves:

• people, bikes and bicycles count zero for a car driver;
• cars are zero for bus and truck drivers, except of course police or army;
• ambulances count nothing to everyone since they got no real power, they are not police or army..)

Once these basic rules are clear, once can try him/herself in the Chinese traffic.

Actually I started thinking about this even before chatting with foreigner friends that lived here many years: when they walk around, not drive, the awareness of obstacles for Chinese people is.. zero!!! That was surprising for me, given the amount of people here.. but when they walk, they keep the same mind of not caring about what happens around them, but if a person walk straight along their path, they do not realize it until they crash! I think there is a Chinese inborn instinct that makes them avoiding each other, probably the body reacts to special pheromones that let them avoiding each other, but does not react when a laowai walks straight to them!