Driving in China laws · Laws in Driving in China
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Laws in Driving in China
Laws in Driving in China
In mainland China, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road. Various neighbours ? Hong Kong, Macau, India, Nepal and Pakistan ? drive on the left.
The official driving code in the People's Republic of China is the Road Traffic Safety Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国道路交通安全法). It applies to all vehicles in China except military vehicles.
A vehicle with a government or military, (including police and fire departments) plates are white but occasionally blue, may not follow any rules. It may run a red light or simply go in the wrong direction or weave in and out of traffic.
There is a supplementary regulation to the Road Traffic Safety Law (中华人民共和国道路交通安全法实施条例) which specifies how specific regulations in the main law are supposed to be carried out.
Increasingly, Chinese Police tend to accept the IDP (also called IDL or IDD) or translations to the format of an IDP. They focus very much on their on-the-spot judgment of the driver's being sufficiently skilled and experienced to drive safely with respect to his own and others safety. (But be careful if you want to use a IDL as it is not officially accepted in China, and driving without a Chinese license can get you up to 14 days' imprisonment. In Shenzhen, for example it is currently illegal to do so and you will be very likely checked as foreigner. Especially when you pass the SEZ checkpoints.)
In case of an accident, if it is minor as a scrape, most people just drive on. If you stop and agree about whatever, you can then continue. It is common that the failing driver pay about 100 yuan or so to the other driver, and that is then the end of the matter. If you disagree, you must not move the cars until the police arrive, which can take time. This also results in many of the massive traffic jams you will encounter on Chinese roads. They usually check registration and licenses and photograph the incident. In case of personal injury, you should stop and offer assistance. It is highly unlikely that a person not involved in the accident from the general public will offer any assistance outside of perhaps helping you phone the police. Police response time can be poor or very slow. Chinese are very hesitant to offer assistance because of a supposed fear of being sued and the supposed fact that person who phones for an ambulance must pay the bill. At least this is the conventional wisdom.
Beware of large imported luxury cars. Sometimes they belong to gangsters or young, immature relatives of senior party or other officials, who consider themselves to be above the law, which, unfortunately in a hyper-corrupt country such as China, is very often the case.
If you suspect that the police have taken bribes from the other party, which often happens, make them aware that you know about the Ministry of Supervision (which ruthlessly deals with corruption) or the Tourist Complaint Board. It can have a profound effect on procedures. Police in China are usually very helpful and understanding towards visitors but biases have been reported against foreigners regarding blame in traffic accidents.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Driving in China
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Driving in China Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.