Pile Up
I always wondered how those 50 or 100 car pile-ups could happen on expressways. Today I found out. The first thing I noticed when I stepped outside the house at 6 am this morning was the smell of burning grass and the soupy air over Shanghai. This is the worst pollution I've seen yet in Shanghai, I thought to myself. Maybe the farmers are burning their rice husks?
I was on my way to Yancheng in Jiangsu Province this morning. A van was taking me and four other people to this coastal city for a trade show. I was asleep in the second row when I was awakened by the noise of screeching brakes and the inertia of being thrown sideways and quickly realized there was a fuel truck looming out of the smog in front of us. Our driver couldn't stop in time so he veered left and we missed the back of the truck by inches and skidded to a sideways halt just feet from another stationery semitrailer in the left lane. I looked behind us and could see another semi skidding up on us from behind. Fortunately for us it caught on the guardrail and lodged between it and the fuel truck to our side. Then a black Audi slammed into the back of the fuel truck and went under its bumper, tearing part of the Audi's roof off.
We unhooked our seat belts and got out of our van and hunkered down behind a concrete barrier. We could hear other vehicles slamming brakes and popping noises as they hit the cars and trailers in front of them. This went on for some minutes as the pile up stretched back as far as we could see into the ground-hugging smog.
Cars and vans were engulfed in flames, bloodied people were sitting around the highway dazed in the spots where they landed when they were flung out of their car windows. Cars and trailers were strewn haphazardly across the highway - caught between guardrails on both sides of the two lane highway. It was over an hour before the first ambulance arrived. I stopped counting vehicles when I reached 100. We were stuck there for two hours and didn't see a single police car or policeman the entire time. Everyone was just walking around looking at the destruction and helping the injured.
People at the front of the pile-up pushed cars aside and made a path through the mayhem and those that could still drive started inching out of the mess. We drove between two burning cars as we began to clear the wreckage and I noticed the body of a man dressed in farmers clothes stretched out in the road in front of a semi that had jackknifed. He was quite dead and had apparently been laying there for a couple of hours uncovered. I wondered if he had been crossing the road in the thick smog and been hit by the trailer - thus starting this whole chain reaction.
The rest of the day all I could think about was whether the farmer had any children and tonight I worry about them grieving the loss of their father.
Every day in China at least 300 people are killed in traffic accidents, which ranks China top in the world for both the death toll and the death rate. And the figure is accelerating by 10 per cent every year. Half of Chinese drivers don't wear seat belts.
I was on my way to Yancheng in Jiangsu Province this morning. A van was taking me and four other people to this coastal city for a trade show. I was asleep in the second row when I was awakened by the noise of screeching brakes and the inertia of being thrown sideways and quickly realized there was a fuel truck looming out of the smog in front of us. Our driver couldn't stop in time so he veered left and we missed the back of the truck by inches and skidded to a sideways halt just feet from another stationery semitrailer in the left lane. I looked behind us and could see another semi skidding up on us from behind. Fortunately for us it caught on the guardrail and lodged between it and the fuel truck to our side. Then a black Audi slammed into the back of the fuel truck and went under its bumper, tearing part of the Audi's roof off.
We unhooked our seat belts and got out of our van and hunkered down behind a concrete barrier. We could hear other vehicles slamming brakes and popping noises as they hit the cars and trailers in front of them. This went on for some minutes as the pile up stretched back as far as we could see into the ground-hugging smog.
Cars and vans were engulfed in flames, bloodied people were sitting around the highway dazed in the spots where they landed when they were flung out of their car windows. Cars and trailers were strewn haphazardly across the highway - caught between guardrails on both sides of the two lane highway. It was over an hour before the first ambulance arrived. I stopped counting vehicles when I reached 100. We were stuck there for two hours and didn't see a single police car or policeman the entire time. Everyone was just walking around looking at the destruction and helping the injured.
People at the front of the pile-up pushed cars aside and made a path through the mayhem and those that could still drive started inching out of the mess. We drove between two burning cars as we began to clear the wreckage and I noticed the body of a man dressed in farmers clothes stretched out in the road in front of a semi that had jackknifed. He was quite dead and had apparently been laying there for a couple of hours uncovered. I wondered if he had been crossing the road in the thick smog and been hit by the trailer - thus starting this whole chain reaction.
The rest of the day all I could think about was whether the farmer had any children and tonight I worry about them grieving the loss of their father.
Every day in China at least 300 people are killed in traffic accidents, which ranks China top in the world for both the death toll and the death rate. And the figure is accelerating by 10 per cent every year. Half of Chinese drivers don't wear seat belts.
posted by Kevcham at 7:01 AM
2 Comments:
The fact that there were no police shows what one of the main problems with traffic is.
The family is glad you were not injured. You might want to stay awake from now on so you can make a fast exit.
Crazy experience. Glad you're alright m8. I've seen some pretty gruesome smack-ups here, but nothing of the scope that you experienced.
Not having spent much time on China's highways, I've never considered this - does China have provincial-level police for highway patrol?
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