Who's There Wins |
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I am often asked “Isn’t it dangerous to cycle in Beijing?”. For those familiar with Beijing traffic, this is quite a reasonable question. In fact, similar questions had crossed my mind when I first arrived here more than a year ago. People were driving on the wrong side of the road, hardly anyone stopped when the lights were red, even when it was green for pedestrians, and there were thousands of bicycles in constant though seemingly arbitrary motion. It was nothing like I had seen before, so my mountain bike stayed in its box for a few more weeks.
Then came a series of days with brilliant weather: blue skies, bright sun and crisp air. The bicycle was taken out of its box, and I went out for a spin. It was a wonderful ride around the city, and I was surprised and delighted that the traffic was not as bad as it looked.
This is the strange thing, for whilst the traffic is apparently chaotic and the volume is high, I have not observed many accidents. It was a puzzling question. In other places where I have cycled, people were either guided by the Highway Code, or by a sense of self-preservation. In Beijing, neither seemed to be the case. The drivers didn’t seem to follow any Highway Code I knew, and the pedestrians were just as likely to step off the pavement in front of a bus, as they would in front of a bicycle. The fact that a fair number of bicycles don’t have brakes adds a further interesting dimension.
It was a particularly important puzzle to solve, because I had to know how to get about town on the bike, without falling victim to my other fellow road users. So I thought I would take it slowly and watch everyone else.
This, I believe, is in fact the answer. People seldom stop, but they go slowly. Everyone then has quite a bit of time to react to another’s somewhat unpredictable actions. On the few occasions I have ridden my bike faster than the crowd, it became significantly harder to ride safely. No one is expecting you to do 30 km/h on a bike, and it doesn’t get you faster to your destination, as you’re either stopped at intersections by the crossing traffic, or you’re repeatedly blocked by a dense pack of cyclists going at a more sedate 8 km/h.
Having worked out that the key to cycling in Beijing is to go slowly, I began to wonder if the traffic really was as chaotic as it appeared to be. Closer observation seemed to indicate that people were not just reacting to each other, but were also anticipating actions, indicating that there was some principle guiding them. At first I thought that the motto “Who dares wins” was at work. Whoever is braver (or more foolish) to stay on his course, though it might lead to a collision, gets his way when the other chickens out. But then I noticed that there was no element of competition in people’s movements. They just went their own way, without challenging or making eye contact with their “competing” road users.
Further personal and unscientific observation has yielded another theory. This principle is that the person who is at a particular place first has the superior right of being there, regardless of who comes next. Or as my fellow cyclist Peter Alsop much more elegantly puts it, “Who’s there wins!”.
This would then explain why a pedestrian would choose to cross the road right in front of my bicycle, rather then after I have passed, even though the road is clear of other traffic. It would also explain why a taxi can cut in front of a bus with just a whisker of space to spare, and not cause any ill feelings with the bus driver. Both the pedestrian and the taxi driver got there first, so it was my and the bus driver’s duty to avoid them.
Observations of this principle in action have also been augmented by personal tests. These were conducted by complying with the Highway Code. For example, stopping at a red light when the way ahead is clear would almost always threaten a pile-up of bicycles, as no-one would have expected this. Similarly, giving way to a vehicle or a cyclist having the right of way, when you would have reached that spot first had you disregarded them, only results in curses as the other person first swerves to avoid where they thought you would have been, then swerves again to avoid you where you actually are.
However, I have no observations as to what happens if, despite having got to the middle of the road first, the bus fails to stop and runs you over. It would therefore be advisable to continue applying the principle of self-preservation until I have concluded my studies.
So, we come back to the question, “Isn’t it dangerous to cycle in Beijing?”. Well, thousands if not millions of people do it very successfully every day. I believe that if you go slowly with the crowd, applying common sense, you’ll probably do fine.
