Road Traffic in China

Abstract

Traffic is tightly related to the social and economic development in a country. In China the development of the economy has been very fast in the past 30 years and this is still continuing. The transport infrastructure shows a similar pattern, while traffic is also rapidly growing. In urban areas this growth has led to severe congestion problems, lack of parking space, air pollution and unsafety. Many Chinese citizens intend to buy a car as soon as they have sufficiently money, and accordingly car ownership is steeply growing. The national government considers the motorized vehicle market as a stimulus for the national economy development; urban authorities try to reduce the utilization of cars in the urban areas and to slow down the growth of car ownership, e.g. by limiting the number of new number plates. In China, the number of fatal accidents per motor vehicle is diminishing, as is common in countries with a growing car ownership. The general trend that novice drivers have a larger accident risk than experienced drivers may have a long lasting, rather than a temporal, influence on the Chinese accident statistics, because the driving population is keeping growing with novice drivers. The discipline of Chinese road users and especially drivers shows opportunities for improvement. Disobedience significantly contributes to the number of fatal accidents (3% of the road fatalities are due to alcohol abuse, 14% to speeding, 12% to ignorance of priority rules). Some conclusions are drawn with respect to study methods and tools that can be applied In China. Since the traffic conditions and driving behaviour in China are so different from these in Europe and America, it is not warranted to apply the methods and tools developed in the Western world directly for the traffic studies in China.