Monday 2 March 2009

Chinese Driving License

I wish I knew what they had to do to get a license in China - from the looks of things on the road, not a lot besides rudimentary grasp of what pedal does what and how to turn the steering wheel. Being quick on the brake helps avoid jail, ergo most of them are quite good at that. A lot of people have automatic gearboxes which makes me think they don't actually know much about their cars (for the record, I don't know about how a gearbox really works but I do enjoy the control I have when I drive a manual car over how the engine performs in a given situation) ... the buses are manual-drive and some of the drivers clearly don't know what they're doing, feels like they are taking off in 4th gear sometimes (they may be).

But what gets me the most, and it could just be Urumqi drivers, is reversing. They have not got a clue about going backwards (which is funny considering everything else I say about China and Urumqi is basically saying they are very good at being backwards). Bay parking? Not a clue how to line up. Reversing round a corner? Inch by sodding inch. Part of the reason is they don't think the rear window is very important and it's often blacked out, blocked off, with lots of luggage on it, etc. The other part is, well I'm throwing a wild guess out here, they simply don't get taught about it.

So please, anyone, information on driving licenses in China?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

oh come on, you should know by now. Just pay your local CCP official a bit of cash and there you go.