Here is a reason why motorcycles are barred from most cities

[bigdamo]

Thanks for your constructive comment. Read my posts, read my point. Offer something constructive, or don't participate in the conversation.

Sorry for my bad grammar and now my nonconstructive comments.

Gees you are touchy your holiness.

I'll be sure to not add to a thread I started.

[lightend]

havent read the whole thread yet but this bit caught my eye

"Cars are for important people and the price must be paid, while motorcycles are for the poor, for farmers, for unimportant people and hence are a serious nuisance to the important people."

not so, now even the poor can buy a new car for 20,000 RMB,,, some of us here pay more than that for our bikes...
but the fact that they have a car normally makes them very arrogant. chinese people who have a car believe they are king of the road and everyone else should see them coming and give way to them.

also i have been told by my students that when their mother or whoever couldnt pass their driving license, they paid someone to go and do it in their place. so there are many car drivers who shouldnt be on the road and yet are because they had a helping hand.

ebikes need no license... this is a BIG BIG problem in china, they graduate from a bike that does 10kph and go to a ebike where they dont have to even pedal or be awake and go 60kph.

also many chinese have NO road safety sense at all. (im married to one of these people, how she lived this long without a minder is beyond me)

now to even the odd's, im not a great driver my self, i have got my self into situations that i regret (no damage but have almost become road jam on more than one occasion)

there is a chinese saying 'there is no medicine for stupidity' when ever (almost daily) someone forces me to brake hard or swerve fast into an area that i havent checked in my mirror or require a new set of pants that i dont think that line to my self, normally i also say it. sometimes, when im in a bad mood i will follow them until they stop at a red light and park up by their window and stair at the driver while shaking my head, if i can get in front of the car and 'accidentally' stall the bike and require a kick start to get it moving again, all the better. unfortunily most of these people who cause me to swear under my breath are the eldely on foot / peddle bike, the young on scooters / foot or the middle aged on scooters doing something very stupid.

from my own experiences, the taxi motorbikes are actually some of the best drivers on the road... with the exception of driving at 10 miles per hour while chatting on the phone about things hes forgotten or people he needs to pick up. but i have over taken a police motorbike with 2 cops on it, the driver with one hand on the throttle the other on a phone chatting away oblivious to everyone else. How i would have loved to have gotten a photo of that...

better read the rest of the thread now...

RANT OVER...

[lightend]

I also noticed this
"This year, traffic accidents involving bikes, mopeds and scooters have accounted for 269 deaths, more than 40 percent of all traffic fatalities in Shanghai. In most cases, riders should have borne at least as much responsibility as vehicle drivers, say police. Some officers worry that the situations "are getting worse.""

so that means that 60 percent of traffic fatalities in shanghai are from cars and trucks????
damn, safer to have a bike after all.

[bigdamo]

bigdamo, I think you're missing the point that ZMC is trying to make. The way that I at least interpret it is not that "it's impossible to get hurt on a motorcycle if you're properly trained with a lot of experience" but rather that quoting statistics about motorcycle accidents is NOT an argument for the banning of motorcycles. The original post and the title of this thread is: "Here is a reason why motorcycles are barred from most cities". THIS is what is being called propaganda- citing a totally ambiguous and arbitrary statistic without offering any substantiated background or context for that statistic. Important information would be: how long had those people been riding, what were they riding, who was ultimately at fault, was the other person in a car, were they licensed, as well as the sample size as was stated in earlier comments. It's a completely bogus argument to say that since there are a lot of motorcycle accidents, they should ban motorcycles. Drugs are illegal in most countries but that doesn't stop the drug related deaths and violence. The solution is, as Lao Jia Hou indicated in a previous response, proper training, licensing, and regulation rather than driving the sport/hobby/form of transportation under ground. You are fortunate enough to be able to use your car in the winter to travel, many in China are not.

The point is not that you don't have to be killed on a motorcycle if you're actually a good driver. Of course it's easier for you to get killed on a motorcycle than in a car since you're more exposed. However good and well trained motorcyclists are inherently more cautious because of that risk. There is a large amount of moral hazard inherent in driving a car, which is what makes them more dangerous. Cars take more risks since they're probably more safe. Back home, if you've taken a motorcycle safety course, your car insurance actually goes down about 10% on top of your motorcycle insurance going down, simply because the insurance companies are aware that this makes you a better driver.

I just recently finished a 1,700km trip down the coast from Beijing to Qingdao and I was appalled at the state of the 4+ wheeled drivers out there; it made me grateful that I live in Beijing. There is absolutely no sense of how to deal with motorcyclists on the road. I can't tell you how many times I was pushed out of my lane or had oncoming traffic passing in my lane or cars making left turns out of intersections when I was driving. Maybe the problem is a complete lack of education for drivers on both sides of the situation. I often found myself wishing I had packed some ball bearings to keep in pocket to teach lessons the old fashioned Hell's Angel way... I can also tell you that I found far more accidents with cars involved over those 7 days of driving than motorcycles (including even the e-bikes or small motorcycles/scooters), even from a percentage perspective.

OK here is some statistics from Australia I'd say it is inherently more dangerous riding a motorcycle in China than Australia plus you have to do a rather rigorous rider training course in Australia before you get your motorcycle license.

"Professor Harrison said motorbike riding was increasingly popular, although this form of transport was 10 times more dangerous than traveling in a vehicle in terms of serious injury risk."

http://smh.drive.com.au/roads-and-tr...617-20id7.html

[Jonsims]

I don't know why I got this notification but the reason most people say why m/cycles are banned from Chinese cities is the amount of illegal business carried out.. Illegal taxis and theft.. mostly handbag snatching. Actually there is no law stating that scoots cannot go on expressways but they are banned by local provincial gvt. Draconian.. nope.. that is some bollox from startreck. Most decent hotels also ban motorcycles.. Pisses me off when my mates and I turn up to spend our money with the snobs and our m/cycles are worth a lot more than the average quality car but hell.. morons exist in all walks of life.
To comment on a comment just now... It doesn't matter how "proficient" you are on two wheels. There is a fecundity of fk~wits here. I've been scooting in China for 16 years and apart from the silly little kisses, only had one major.. If I had not been experienced I'd probably be dead but I've seen a few corpses of experienced bikers.. If your number is on it, your'e stuffed.

This weekend see you all in Hefei.. There will be a lot of bikers, sadly mostly BMW but you never know.. there may be some real people to!

[MJH]

There are likely more motorcycle riders in china then there are people in Australia.

Australia’s population is about 23 million, what percentage ride?

Every country would theoretically have a number, a percentages that ride and propensity for those to be ridding, could call it a percentage of on the road time. In a 24hr period, daily how much time is spent on two wheels.

I hypotheses that china is much higher, with more people ridding and more often, much more often then in Australia and in much denser traffic.


In the USA there were 4,500 fatalities involving motorcycles last year, around 80-90,000 accident per year.
There are 311 million people in the USA.

Compared to 8500 accidents in Australia, that’s ten percent of the US statistic, roughly. Based on the populations Australia has a higher rate then the USA. You are more likely to be in an accident and more likely for it be a fatality. The 2,057 fatalities would be a guess per year in Australia based on the 9 month 1543 actual the article states.

23 million 2,057 annual fatalities AUS
311 million 4,500 annual fatalities. USA

Unless there is much more of the population ridding motorcycle in Australia then in the USA, and that higher percentage also rides more often, then the riders in the USA do, its much more dangerous to ride in Australia then in the USA.

[TB-Racing]

once again big drama out along Hongmei Road (near the bar / restaurant street) this morning, lot's of bike confiscated......

[ZMC888]

This happens everywhere. You can usually get your bike out of the Gong An vehicle jail for 300-500 yuan, minus the gasoline in the tank too, yes actually the police are thieves! So you think huh? Some of the bikes are legally plated WTF why are they on the back of that is this truck? That's because there was one legal omission in the paperwork, no insurance or driving license. It's not about safety as a smuggle-imported un-plated scooter is just as likely taken away as a legal Honda with lapsed insurance. This is what happens to your bike if you aren't legal and don't have money or guanxi (usually migrant workers) and is probably about 5% of all the bikes stopped that day. Most of the people pay off the cop parked just out of view around the corner, or phone a cop friend and play their 'get out of jail free' card.

[bikerdoc]

Likely the bikes confiscated and on the back of the tow truck pictured above, either didn't have paid up 3rd party insurance (compulsory) or else the bikes inspection were out of date. I note that the bike second in closest to the truck cab still has a the typical dealers advertising placard in situ. For those outside China, this dealer "placard" should not be confused with a dealers license or registration plate, since these do not exist in China (yet). Also it bears worth remembering that police have little hand held portable data terminals that they can and do use to search a given vehicles particulars in real time. I've seen in it in action being used at controlled intersections, compulsory check points, by a cop walking a long a line of parked cars, and one time when I stopped on the side of the road in front of a patrol car. The one cop in the car proceeded to get out of the passengers seat (while his colleague was in shop) come up behind me while I was still sitting on the bike and watched what he was doing he input my plate details into his hand held data terminal. He then came up to me and wanted to see my driver license etc. No worries - all legal. Of course I could have ridden off since they hardly ever do pursuits here, though I have seen it done one time, but since I was all legal I had no reason to run.

If its lapsed inspection or insurance then it's a case of paying the fine & remedying what needs to be done too, and then said bike will be released.

[Lao Jia Hou]

Interesting.

There is some big gov't mtg about to happen in Beijing (September/October), so we're back in crackdown mode. The Chinese motorcycle forums in Beijing are exploding with stories of police checks, seizures, etc. Interestingly, Beijing TV ran some news reports earlier this week about the "serious problem" with illegal bikes in Beijing. Essentially, the report was saying that because it has become so difficult to plate a car in Beijing (>1 million hopefuls in the plate lottery this month, vying for 20,000 plates), people are purchasing bikes. When the reporter interviewed a police official, he said "the illegal bike problem has become difficult because those people who ride illegal bikes are also the people who are breaking the laws and making it dangerous on the roads."

Yesterday was one of the rare days I drove my car. I crawled past two motorcycle check points (one can only crawl in a car in Beijing). I couldn't really see what was going on, but I did notice several unhappy faces in the assembled crowd.

I wish my Chinese language ability was better - using Chrome translator, it seems that there has been a spike in negative posts about a "foreigner on an illegal bike" pervading the Chinese forums. Can't blame them, actually. I often see unplated R9s, with an unhelmeted foreigner riding like crazy in the emergency lanes of the Ring Roads. Pisses me off, too. Those morons are F'ing it up for the rest of us ... but I am sure they think they are the coolest, most bad-ass rider ever.

Sigh, where's my blood pressure meds?