Here is a reason why motorcycles are barred from most cities

[Bucko]

Ride safe! PAL
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Moped, scooter drivers deadly

Shanghai Daily Newspaper / Oct 14, 2011

The frequent traffic accidents involving mopeds and scooters, many of them fatal, shed light on reckless drivers in the city, but enforcement is very difficult for authorities.

The riders on mopeds and scooters running red lights, speeding or driving into car lanes, a common scene at busy crossroads, are a headache for traffic police who already are overwhelmed by the dangerous tactics of car and truck drivers on crowded roads.

"The small mopeds can cause big trouble," Wang Denghai, traffic police chief in downtown Zhabei District, said yesterday.

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."

In a citywide crackdown yesterday, police spotted many moped and scooter riders driving recklessly and fearlessly at busy intersections, even with officers present. Maneuvering among moving vehicle flows at the crossing of Hutai and Hengfeng roads in Zhabei District, a moped tried to rush through after the light had turned red about 7am. The rider was stopped by an officer and fined 5 yuan (78 US cents).

In most cases, of course, violators won't be stopped, as officers and traffic assistants simply watch them pass. Officers say they are hard to catch and stop one by one because of their sheer numbers.

"They dash toward the roads just like a school of fish," said officer Yang Zhenqing in Zhabei District. "More often than not, they just run the red lights all together."

At the busy intersection of Yuyuan and Wanhangdu road snear Jing'an Temple, traffic assistants sometimes stand on the pedestrian pass, or crosswalk, using their bodies to block the eager bikes and mopeds from crossing the line. "They are fast and seem to come out all of a sudden," said a driver.

A migrant worker, surnamed Yan, a frequent moped rider, said he was hit and injured by another moped before the holiday and police ruled both shared responsibilities.

The city now has more than 13 million mopeds, scooters and bikes. About 280,000 use gas and 3 million use electricity. Migrant workers have become the main owners of mopeds sand scooters. They usually do not have license plates or carry out-of-town ones, police said.

Police said the top allowed speed for scooters and mopeds is 15 kilometers per hour. But officers found during routine checks that 80 percent of them exceed that speed.

I think this is huge and a big part of the problem in cities. Places like Beijing and Shanghai have been making a lot of progress in terms of, at least relatively, civilized driving techniques. But any trip 50km outside of either of those places will tell you that it's mostly an isolated practice. So of course when you have the people from these outer areas taking their habits into the city on an unregulated vehicle, it's going to cause problems.

I think the other problem is the way that accidents are handled and classified for these vehicles. I recently got into my first motorcycle accident in China, and it was with an electric scooter, carrying two migrant workers going the wrong way down a busy four-lane highway (not in the bike lane) and slammed into me full speed as I was pulling out of a driveway. The problem was is the way the rule is designed is that since I was bigger, I classified as a car and he classified as a bicycle. Thus, I was going to be held fully responsible if the cop hadn't mediated in such a way to let the matter die. This offers very little incentive to follow the rules and in fact plenty of incentive to ignore them. Though I had to pay for my own repairs, I was lucky enough to not have to accompany the gentleman on the other bike for hospital visits, pay for those visits, or pay to fix his bike, which could have been a nightmare.