
Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit - fhinson
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.single.html
======
sandworm101
Forgetting the laws, what sort of people can so casually kill like this? There
are basic human instincts not to hurt people. Armies have to train soldiers to
ignore these feelings because without training most won't kill even under
combat situations. So when I see someone kill so casually I have to believe
that they have rehearsed the scenario in their head beforehand. That means a
large number of chinese people drive around with a plan in their head covering
how to kill should they injure someone. They are mentally prepared at all
times to commit murder on demand. That's messed up. It does not speak well of
the country or its citizens when they travel abroad.

~~~
orthoganol
I lived in China for a few months. The way it was explained to me was, it's
you and your family, and everyone else can f __* off.

~~~
cageface
Been living in Vietnam for the last five years. It's the same way here. Maybe
it's the Chinese influence?

~~~
h_ar
You sure that in Vietnam that there are hit-to-kill incidents?

I thought that thing is exclusive to China. Or at least like that, since I
have a few people who got hit by vehicles but only injured, drivers don't even
tries to finish off.

~~~
cageface
I was referring to the comment that family loyalties seem to be all that
really count, not specifically traffic accidents.

~~~
h_ar
Family loyalty seems to be a Asian-centric trait, especially in Chinese.

No wonder Vietnam have that similarity since they have been influenced by
China for 1000 year.

------
Xcelerate
I could not finish this article. I have read about and seen a lot of
disturbing things, but this bothers me far more than any horror movie or shock
film ever could. The situation exposed in this article evidences something
really fundamental about human nature: the banality of evil.

That someone could run over a _toddler_ and then reverse back and forth over
them just so they only have to pay $50,000 instead of $400,000 — well, it's
absolutely sickening.

Time and again I'm reminded that most people are really only "good" because it
benefits them personally in some way. But the ease with which _so many_ people
simply rationalize away all the horrors that mankind commits — I suppose
that's part of the human genome.

This really depresses me.

~~~
guardiangod
Yes it's sickening, and also broadly understood to be a logical thing to do in
China.

Let's play the devil's advocate and understand the motive behind it-

The average annual wage of a Chinese citizen is $7,500 USD, whereas the
average annual wage of an American is $45,000.

Which means that $400,000 is worth 400,000 x 45,000 / 7,500 = $2,400,000 . And
that's only over 23 years so far. You have to keep paying until the day the
victim dies. That's the equivalent of $105,000 for Americans per year.

If you refuse to pay, the victim will take you to court and confiscate all
your belongings. If you still refuse to get a job to pay, the court will throw
your ass in jail and (here is the important part) force your family to pay,
indefinitely, until the victim dies.

So are you going to have your family pays $105,000 per year while you sit in
jail, or are you going to make sure the victim is dead?

Trust me when I say no one wants to kill another human, but when the law is
lay against you in such way, well don't be surprise that humans can override
their natural instinct.

(I am from Hong Kong that, while most people there do not share the same
sentiment, but can understand the math behind this horrific logic.

~~~
developer1
This. Frankly I don't understand these people who "don't get it". We're
talking about the difference between moving on with your life with a guilty
conscience, vs. having your entire life financially ruined due to _injuring_
someone. I make $80k per year. If my country mandated > $100k per year for
injuring someone, that's literally the rest of my life destroyed. I could not
financially recover for the rest of my life. Ever. For what? An honest
accident in which someone's leg is broken and they feign permanent disability?

Imagine you broke someone's leg. Would you rather kill the person and pay
$1000, or spend the rest of your life in prison? Letting the person live and
paying them $1000 isn't an option. You either get away scott-free, or ruin
your life. I can completely understand a culture in which the reality of the
consequences makes people choose the lesser punishment.

The solution isn't to increase the punishment for killing someone on the
street. The solution is to abolish the ridiculous costs associated with merely
injuring someone, especially if that injury comes from an accident.

Of course what's absolutely a joke is people acting all aghast about another
country's culture from behind their white picket fences. You do realize that
if you were born in their country, you would have the exact same perspective?
What the fuck is with this high and mighty bullshit? Your upbringing in a
privileged society doesn't make you better than those from less privileged
societies, it just makes you privileged. Be thankful your day-to-day routine
doesn't involve having to worry about the possibility of having to kill
someone in order to keep your pristine life intact.

~~~
tertius
People are worth more than property.

Would I kill someone I don't know in order to save someone I know and love
deeply? No. That is murder. Now saving a loved one vs. saving someone who is a
stranger is a different scenario. The scenario depicted here is very clear.
Kill or suffer loss of property that will impact your family physically.

I can see that this would be much harder to do in a collectivist society, I'll
give you that much. But murder remains immoral.

I also agree that the consequence of injuring someone should be less. But I
don't know what it's so high in the first place so I'm not at a point to
really comment on that.

As an aside, I was not born in the U.S. and have lived the vast majority of my
life in my country of origin. You stating that I would have the same
perspective of those in China if I grew up there does not make that
perspective the morally justifiable one. Not having grown up in that culture
has given me (or most of us) the freedom of thought to come to the point where
we can clearly identify it as immoral, even if we are never faced with the
proposition.

------
tzs
Three questions:

1\. The article notes that the monetary cost to the driver for accidentally
killing someone is much less than the cost for accidentally disabling someone.

For drivers that do not have much wealth, and who are the sole source of
income for their family, I can see how [1] they might decide that the harm to
their family from having to pay that higher cost might outweigh the harm from
killing a stranger. People tend to value their immediate family very much more
than they value strangers.

However, it seems a lot of these cases were people driving expensive luxury
cars. For people with the incomes or wealth to afford those cars, is the cost
difference enough to actually cause serious hardship for them or their family?

2\. How does this work when the pedestrian is a foreigner, such as a tourist
or a business traveler?

Do drivers know that (1) these people will have their medical bills taken care
of by insurance or the national healthcare systems of their home countries, so
there is no need to kill them, and (2) it would really piss off their home
country, which would cause severe diplomatic pressure on China to seriously
punish the driver?

3\. Drivers certainly cannot count on always being able to finish off any
pedestrian they hit. Why hasn't an insurance market sprung up to deal with the
risk of disabling pedestrians?

[1] Note: "I can see how" is not meant to mean "I approve of". It is
observational, not judgmental.

------
rectang
I'm reminded that many land mines are designed to maim rather than kill,
maximizing the cost to the enemy by forcing them to care for wounded
casualties.

------
mirimir
There's a similar dynamic in Mexico. Causing injury can mean responsibility
for lifetime care. Another factor is Napoleonic law aka presumption of guilt.
So one may end up in jail until trial. The third factor is ubiquitous graft.
After an accident, the party with the most cash gets to tell the official
story. So yes, advice is to flee with plates and registration (if any). But I
didn't get that killing victims was commonplace.

~~~
spacehome
> Causing injury can mean responsibility for lifetime care.

As well it should.

~~~
danny8000
No, there is insurance for that. Motor vehicles are inherently dangerous
machines, and we all take the risk of injuring someone every time we drive.
Insurance distributes the risk of driving across all drivers. You should only
be punished for injuring someone with a car if you were negligent.

~~~
spacehome
> No, there is insurance for that.

Then being responsible means having the insurance. Not having the insurance is
being irresponsible.

~~~
arrayjumper
That's why having insurance is a requirement for driving in most countries.

~~~
praneshp
Do you think having a law is enough in a country that big? Its probably
cheaper to bribe your way out after being caught than to pay the premium.

~~~
undersuit
Or lie. My friend was rear ended recently. When the officer came he took both
their statements and checked their insurance. She finds out after the crash
the guy that rear ended her had let his car insurance lapse and lied to the
officer about the validity of his coverage. Apparently the liar is also a law
student at the local university.

This happened in the US and luckily my friend spent the money for uninsured
motorist coverage on her policy.

------
speeder
In Brazil the punishment for murder is lesser than many other crimes, leading
to people murdering investigators (or in one particularly infamous case, a
mayor murdered two environmental cops that were going to investigate his farm,
got convicted, but still got re-elected).

Also firing a gun and not hitting anything also has a harsher punishment than
hitting someone, so unless you are a cop that need to draw attention or
something, if you need to fire a gun, you need to make sure you will hit
someone.

~~~
chaostheory
The general culture of the Central and South America is actually pretty
similar to China and other Asian countries.

~~~
copperx
Did you mean "general disregard of the law" by "culture"? Because the cultures
are light years apart.

~~~
chaostheory
Are they? Which culture do you feel is more ahead in terms of trust?

~~~
andrewflnr
That's a very narrow perspective. There are (possibly literally) uncountably
many other dimensions of culture than level of trust in society.

------
jmspring
Not the same, but...an anecdote from when I went through driver's education.
This was many moons ago and it was meant tongue in cheek, with a bit of truth
-- if you hit a pedestrian to the point they are severely injured, you better
hope they don't survive.

Thinking seems to be -- A car versus a pedestrian (or cyclist) unless a
glancing blow is going to do a lot of damage to the ped/cyclist. Personal
liability could be _huge_ in the case of injury, much more so (potentially)
than wrongful death.

We see this commonly in the Bay Area in motorist killing a cyclist, the
criminal penalty (if any) is often not as severe as it should be.

(The above said, even when the motorist hits and the ped/cyclist survives,
getting justice can be long and involved -- classic case is the Los Gatos/Los
Altos business man who severely impacted a cyclist who was permanently injured
-- [http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20884491/saratoga-
businessman-...](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20884491/saratoga-businessman-
robert-schiro-sentenced-three-years-state) )

I don't advocate such, just a story and some bay area experiences I remember.

------
e40
This is a very good example of the law of unintended consequences.

------
kzhahou
The story in the intro doesnt match the well-publicized video of the accident,
which is on YouTube. The driver does NOT switch into reverse, and the
grandmother does not scream for the driver to stop. So unless there was
another toddler run-over by a white vehicle in the same city, the driver just
made shit up. WTH???

------
massysett
The story emphasizes laws on monetary compensation for victims, which I think
misses the point entirely. The real reason people are doing this is because
they can commit murder and apparently they are not punished for it. If you
deliberately run over a living person to kill him, that is murder.

------
ausjke
Everything is about money when the amount is huge, anything else, including
killing, comes to the second.

I don't believe anyone enjoys killing there, however when it's tied with huge
chunks of money, many of them will choose to kill instead of leaving a
disabled human being on wheelchair keeping asking for lifelong financial
support. It's indeed similar to the gun-shoot case in USA, either you don't
pull the trigger, or you make sure the target is absolutely dead, that
explains some victims have lots of gunshots on their body.

The law must be adapted to deal with this.

------
argklm
When the state only thinks about money, people will turn into objects. The
population will start to see other humans less valuable than their dinner
table and will do their best to exploit them. If you go to China you will see
beautiful landscapes, the lineage of one of the most advanced cultures and you
will see the pain and the loneliness of its inhabitants. The rest of the world
didn't cure the infection in time and now has grown to necrosis at the point
that sociopathy it's the norm rather than the exception.

------
bohrshaw
I'm a native living in China. After glancing over the article, I don't bother
reading it in details. The title sounds ridiculous, but certainly marketable.

I see people here are generally sensible but also emotional. I don't have
country level statistics related to these extreme behaviors. But people around
me are all very kind and I know many having very high standard of morality.
We're constantly chasing for the positive and good.

------
LiweiZ
People's actions are the reflection of the real laws/rules in their group. And
people tend to take advantage of it. Thinking about killing someone would make
you lose way less, is it still a normal world? Why didn't those "killers" take
equivalent responsibilities? That's the real why.

------
mgraczyk
Did anybody watch the last video? It looks like the person with the young boy
pushes the boy under the truck.
[http://www.fzjfw.com/xxzx/aritcle194.html](http://www.fzjfw.com/xxzx/aritcle194.html)

I'm surprised that wasn't explained in the article.

------
ilaksh
I'd like to hear the Chinese perspective.

Also, what penalties do people pay in the US if they accidentally cripple
someone?

~~~
jrockway
A few dollars a month more on their insurance premiums.

------
kelukelugames
As a Chinese immigrant I am always baffled when Americans visit third world
countries.

~~~
statictype
You're confusing "China" with "all third world countries"

~~~
nicklaf
Also, China was a Second World country (at least, back when the distinction
still made sense).

Of course, at some point, "Third World" became synonymous with "poor", and was
euphemised to "developing".

~~~
hirsin
When Mao created the notion of the Three Worlds, he included China in the
Third World [1]. It was (ostensibly) unaligned, whereas Europe (and to an
extent Japan) was aligned, making it Second World. He (via Deng) specifically
called out the Third World as underdeveloped.

[1] “Speech by Chairman of the Delegation of the People’s Republic of China,
Teng Hsiao-Ping, at the Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly: April
10, 1974” (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1974).

~~~
mikeash
According to Wikipedia, Mao's concept is different, despite the similar name.
The term "Third World" comes from 1952 and was used to refer to countries not
aligned with either the US or USSR, which would not have included China at the
time.

~~~
meric
In 1952 China was aligned with the USSR. It was in the midst of the Korean War
of 1950-1953 where Chinese Communists funded by the USSR is helping North
Koreans to fight against the South Koreans allied to the US.

The Chinese Civil War where the Communists were funded by the USSR and the
Kuomintang were funded by the US just finished 2 years prior.

~~~
mikeash
Sorry, double negative in my comment which is probably confusing. I meant that
China was not included among the unaligned countries at the time, because it
was aligned with the USSR. In short, yes, what you said.

------
mikerichards
Holy cow, that's some messed up shit. I've never heard of such a thing. And
that they're getting slaps on the wrists if any punishment at all because cops
are believing their insane stories.

What a cultural mess.

~~~
dmm
When a pedestrian or cyclist is killed by a car in the US, so long as the
driver is not drunk and does not leave the scene, the driver will almost never
face criminal penalties.

What we call car accidents are considered an unavoidable part of life to be
resolved by civil courts and insurance payouts.

I'd say say the US has a cultural mess regarding cars too.

~~~
ryanackley
Can you cite sources or any basis at all for this conclusion?

An acquaintance of mine was speeding and killed someone. He went to jail for a
couple of years. No alcohol or drugs were involved and he didn't leave the
scene. He was going something like 80 in a 55mph zone.

~~~
y2c
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-
to...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to-kill-
cyclists.html) has a bunch of examples (though does not link to sources).

Quote from this article: '“We do not know of a single case of a cyclist
fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-
run,” Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle
Coalition, told me.'

Big ones off the top of my head: \- Amelie de Moullac: police found driver at
fault, DA refused to prosecute \- Charles Vinson: driver ran a red light.
Vinson also _technically_ ran a red, but had the walk signal. Vinson was found
at fault; driver not even 50% fault.

These are pretty SF-specific examples, but I don't think it's an SF-specific
phenomenon.

------
iradik
They don't have car insurance in China?

------
Retric
In many of these cases bribes are what get people off not stupidity.

PS: Granted, in a functional democracy changing the perverse incentives is a
much better option. But, unfortunately in China the only reasonable response
to this IMO is to find and brutally kill the driver and then publish this
after the fact. Accidents happen, but murder should never end up as the
'better' option.

~~~
Nadya
So your 'better' option to "getting off the hook" is murder?

On a related topic - if you're dying on the streets of China, your chances of
receiving help are slim. Anyone who attempts to help you is responsible for
your medical bills. They'll let you die on the streets.

The problem here is laws regarding expenses.

~~~
Retric
When the state executes someone for a crime it's generally not considered
murder.

Vigilantism is considered a wide range of things in various cultures, but even
in the US if a someone saw a driver drive back and forth over there kid and
they pulled out a gun and shot the driver in rage then they would likely get
off.

Doing the same thing in cold blood would be considered murder in the US, but
we have a mostly functional court system. Without that Vigilantism may preform
similar functions as state sponsored executions. Sure, it's far from ideal,
but so is cold blooded murder of a child.

PS: Actual death would not be a requierment, but a level of harm that causes
people to avoid murder is.

~~~
jqm
"we have a mostly functional court system"

I think we actually have a manifestly dysfunctional court system. But I
suppose comparatively it works at some level.

------
VarunAgw
Please tell me this is not true. How someone can so ruthless? I just can't
believe this

------
pwthornton
China is apparently a bigger hell hole than I could have ever imagined.

------
malkia
I've heard of a similar story, but in a different context. One of the asian
airlines (I don't remember whether it was Taiwan, South Korean, etc.) had
problems and lots of crashes. Turns out, people were not accustomed of
questioning their bosses, and if this boss was your other co-pilot you
would've never even try to correct them. I can't find the article, but it went
something like "a western professor" goes to the troubled company and fixes
the problem "overnight" by simply retraining the employees that they should be
able to judge their superiours.

I'm sorry for missing the critical part here - the actual article, but such
cultural traits can definitely surprise people from other countries (like it
did me with this one).

~~~
znt
It's in the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

More info: [http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-
gladwell-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on-
culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/)

~~~
malkia
Thank you! Yes, I believe this was the original article, but I've never
bothered to read the book. Maybe I should!

Edit: From the last comment found this article - which goes a bit against
Malcolm Gladwell's findings - interesting read indeed -
[http://askakorean.blogspot.kr/2013/07/culturalism-
gladwell-a...](http://askakorean.blogspot.kr/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-and-
airplane.html)

~~~
studentrob
Gladwell is definitely hand-wavy. I think this article's most compelling point
is that Gladwell apparently did not ask a person of Korean culture to
interpret the copilot's speech. In particular, one wonders, were the copilot's
warning of adverse weather put lightly? Or did Gladwell misinterpret this
man's usage of English language + Korean culture which, while seemingly more
polite, may have different signals for urgency?

I work in Taiwan and disagreeing with the boss, while unpopular everywhere, is
certainly less tolerated here than my experience in the west (east coast US).
So Gladwell's story is compelling and built on a known difference in cultures.
Yet, as usual, he is missing some facts to make his case.

The real question is, how is the airline performing now after the culture
change brought in by the "western professor" as noted in the above comment by
malkia? Are they still operating with his suggestions and have they been
operating more smoothly? How do employees there feel about the change?

~~~
shard
There's exaggeration on both Gladwell and Ask A Korean's side. I have been
living and working in Korean for the past 5 years, and have been married to my
Korean wife for 6 years. Based on the transcript that Ask A Korea posted, it's
very clear that that first officer is acting deferentially to the pilot.
Specifically, the first officer uses polite speech with the pilot, and the
pilot uses familiar speech with the first officer. In my company, neither my
manager nor my manager's manager uses familiar speech with me, I'd have to go
up 3 levels for that to start happening. Also, when I described what Gladwell
mentioned in his book about hierarchy to my wife, she didn't think it was
exaggerated. There's likely a large grain of truth to Gladwell's
representation of what happened. Also, Ask A Korean is usually fairly
nationalistic in his posts, which is a common trait amongst Koreans that I
have interacted with.

------
matt2000
The fact that this story is the top of hacker news should indicate to us all
that this site has lost what it had. How is this different than reddit? How do
we want it to be different? This is simply a sensational, horrifying article
that has been up voted because of its shock value. We can do better.

~~~
elwell
I would say:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic)
but that doesn't seem to help much.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
What is that page?

~~~
dang
Stories ranked using votes from old accounts.

------
droopybuns
Why should I trust an article like this?

Outrageous claims. No sources. pageviews.exe

~~~
maaku
The second paragraph links to security camera footage.

------
netforay
Even though it is something I wanted to know, unfortunately this is not a
story that I want to read at hacker news.

~~~
codyb
I thought it was very interesting to learn about the effects of certain
societal aspects on human behavior in societies at large.

Hackernews serves as a distribution vector for most content which expands the
mind to new technologies, cultures, science, or entrepreneurial techniques.

For you, there is still quite a fair amount of technical content posted daily
:-).

------
weirand
In china where the population density is so high that there's no room left for
humanity.

