One of my readers just left a link to an article in a Dutch newspaper about traffic accidents around Chinese New Year in China. It appears that over the past week 1100 people died in traffic accidents. Over the past week 227 million Chinese (including me) took either a bus or car to visit their relatives somewhere else in China. According to the short report the fatal accidents went down by 33% due to more police patrols (I did not see them on my 1300 km trip) and a publicity campaign in the media (missed that as well). Most accidents occur because people do not follow the traffic rules – that I fully agree to, especially in combination with a total lack of driving experience.
Well, after reading this I am even more glad I hired a professional driver to drive back my car to Shanghai. He delivered it to us Sunday around noon, he did the trip in two days, because he said it was too tiring to drive in one time. The driver even filled up the car and washed it before handing it back. Great service!