A road ethics lesson for drivers
Liu Shinan China Daily  Updated: 2005-11-16 06:58

Twenty young lives perished in an instant, as the teenagers, bursting with youthful spirit, greeted sunrise with their routine morning exercises on a rural road.

Nine hundred students of the No 2 Middle School of Qinyuan County, Shanxi Province, were jogging on the road when a heavy-duty truck dashed along "like it was mad" and "swept down" a group of students, killing 18, including a teacher, instantly and injuring 21. Three of the injured died soon after being sent to hospital.

The tragedy shocked the nation and sparked furious outcries among Internet communities.

Many critics directed their anger at local educational authorities for their negligence of school safety. They questioned the practice of letting students do physical exercises on public roads, blaming the authorities for failing to provide an exercise ground for students.

The school and the government departments concerned certainly should take some of the blame. The problem of school safety has become increasingly serious recently, with a rise in the number of fatalities.

In these incidents, school authorities were definitely culpable, because of their poor management of the schools.

In Monday's accident, however, the truck driver is the most guilty. Driving his monstrous vehicle directly towards the children with clear visibility down the road, the motorist was nothing short of a killer. It was not an accident: It was manslaughter.

The exact cause of the tragedy had not been revealed by press time, but the 50-metre long tyre marks and the condition of the damaged truck suggest that the motorist was speeding.

Truck drivers are the most outrageous in this country. They never give a thought to other road users when they rampage along highways or urban streets. Every time I see a heavily loaded truck roar past, I wonder how the driver can bring the mammoth machine to a halt should something unexpected happen. And every time I drive on a country road at night, I curse with clenched teeth because trucks coming from the opposite direction never dim their dazzling lights.

Generally I sympathize with manual labourers because they are often the weak side in social conflicts. But I won't take pity on truck drivers in disputes on the road, because I think theirs is a lethal profession, to others as well as themselves. The trucks they are driving can become a lethal weapon if not properly handled. They should have a very strong sense of responsibility.

Of course, it is going to extremes if one blames truck drivers indiscriminately. But it is undeniable that a fairly large percentage of truck drivers are ineligible for their job in terms of professional ethics. There are some underlying causes of this.

One question is: Who should be responsible for guaranteeing that workers in such a highly dangerous trade strictly follow professional standards and ethics? Undoubtedly, road and traffic regulators should take the responsibility.

First, the driving licence is a big problem. In rural areas, the issuance of licences is loose. It is common that a person learns a few driving skills from a private tutor and then spends money obtaining a licence. It is difficult to know exactly how many truck drivers obtain their licences in this way but the percentage is presumably not small, going by the reported number of traffic accidents involving trucks.

Second, China's training of motorists often places more emphasis on driving skills than on road ethics. Though a compulsory course about traffic rules precedes the training, neither the trainees nor the training schools take the one-week course seriously.

That is a sharp contrast with the practice in Western countries, where the training is mainly about the driver's behaviour on the road. Many Chinese immigrants or visitors to Western countries find it very difficult to obtain a driving licence there even though they have had many years of experience of driving in China. I have heard several true stories about Chinese failing the driving test several or even dozens of times in Australia, Britain or the United States. They failed because they did not signal when changing lanes, or drove through a roundabout without waiting for the vehicle which had right of way, or exceeded the speed limit slightly as they are used to doing in China.

Developing a good sense of traffic ethics on the part of motorists, especially truck drivers, will greatly reduce the number of road fatalities.

Email: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/16/2005 page4)