A traffic incident

I saw a woman knocked off her bicycle by a car the other day.

Luckily, it was a very low-speed impact, and she was shaken but unhurt.

In fact, I don't think the car was moving. I'm not sure there was even an impact - I didn't hear one. I think the woman just wasn't paying any attention, didn't see the car in her path until the last minute, and did a bit of a panicky wobble by way of "evasive action", and, er, lost balance.

The car was pulling out of a side road, but (for once) I really don't think the driver was to blame. He had edged cautiously into the bicycle lane, and then stopped again to check that it was safe to pull out (a degree of attentiveness almost unknown amongst Beijing drivers). I'm pretty sure that he was completely stationary at the moment of the "collision".

I should also point out that this was alongside the 4th Ringroad. The car was entering the fulu - the ancillary road - rather than the Ringroad itself; but that's still a pretty busy and dangerous road; Beijingers often just use these ancillary roads indiscriminately as an alternative/supplement to the major roads, and whizz along them at breakneck speeds. Not too many people are foolhardy enough to try to ride a bicycle for any distance along a Ringroad fulu; especially not at this particular point - there's heaps of traffic coming on and off the Badaling Expressway, and a busy bus stop that effectively blocks off the cycle lane for a while anyway.

Oh yes, and the woman was cycling the wrong way, against the flow of traffic. And evidently not looking where she was going (or she wouldn't have been surprised by a car emerging from a large housing complex which has taxis nosing into or out of it every few minutes).

Incidents such as this, I'm afraid, tend to bring out the submerged eugenicist in me. People like this do not deserve to live!

I repeat: this woman was cycling down what is basically a motorway - on the wrong side of the road - with her eyes closed. And she was aggrieved at the poor bloody driver (who might, I think, be forgiven in the circumstances - pulling out on to a busy and dangerous road - for not looking right at all..... although that isn't what caused this accident). Un-fucking-believable. No sense of self-preservation at all.