Are Asians Bad Drivers?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

In China there are actually a lot of regulations, and getting a license is a pretty formal, strict affair. It’s just that no one cares about the regulations; they only care about themselves. “Do I want to turn right from the parking lot onto the main road? Well, I’ll just do it. I don’t care that there’s a car coming at me at 50km/h; he’ll stop, because I’m more important.”

This not caring is compounded by the lack of spacial awareness I mentioned above, and further compounded by lack of enforcement of the existing laws (like not yielding right of way). If it’s not captured on camera, then there’s no enforcement because if you pull a guy over and ticket him, someone is going to lose face. If a machine tickets you and you pay the fine online, no problem.

Thailand seems to be one of the saner places to drive in Asia. I’ll take it over China and India any day! The worst thing about Thailand is everyone invents their own turn lanes. Granted, I’ve only stuck to the toll roads and I’m only considering automobiles.

22

I think it’s more about the rule of law in a certain society, rather than any innate ability. For example, the road fatality rate in Singapore is 2.94, lower than even the Asian fatality rate in the US, and a quarter of the rate of whites in the US.

23

The large majority of the time when I see an awful driver, it turns out to be an African-American female. I have noticed my fair share of bad Asian drivers, but nowhere near as many as the aforementioned demographic.

For reference, I live in a county in the US where the population is ~96% Caucasian. I am not sure how to interpret that data, but I’ve found it to be consistent. Very odd.

24

What got my attention was the teeth. Something I would have expected in some 1940’s propaganda, not on the dope.

:frowning:

25

I was in Vietnam in 08,09,00 for a few weeks during them summers.
The traffic is not imaginable by our standards. I have a picture of
A man with 30 24packs of beer on a scooter. A single lane of traffic
can contain two cars and up to eight scooters. I do not believe
Asians are worse drivers than us but I think they see it more of a
wrestling match. Most people in Vietnam have never gone more than
40 miles an hour, 60 k. not because they are slow, the roads are bad
and there are millions of people on them.

26

Somewhere or other I heard a comment that, culturally, the Chinese do not use the concept of wait-in-line; it’s get-to-the-front. If valid - and I have no solid data - this could figure into the topic at hand.

Anecdotally, the only data I have is a near accident on the 580 near Orinda, CA.
On a Sunday morning with that California rarity of an empty road, the only other car - driven by an Oriental - swerved across in front of me and slowed down well within my right of way. I avoided him, but it involved some tire slippage and a compliment on my driving skills. :eek:
Deliberate attempt to cause an accident? I can’t say for sure. But it might have been interesting if I had been less on the ball since my passenger was an ex-cop. :smiley:

27

I should have read on … :o

That’s the sort of attitude I was referring to.

28

Motorcyclists using the sidewalks as traffic lanes is up there too. The police not only don’t try to stop this from happening, they do it themselves!

29

Having spent some amount of time driving in Beijing, this is what I have come to think about the Asians-are-bad-drivers meme: Asians aren’t bad drivers, they just drive differently. When everyone drives the same way, it works just fine. But take that style and plonk it down amid Americans, and it looks crazy.

But similarly, if you drove like an American in Beijing, the drivers there would probably think you were driving badly. And they would be right, because you were failing to adapt your style to the local one.

What I found interesting about driving in Beijing was that, unlike in America, everyone is paying attention. Drivers watch other drivers much more carefully than they do in the States. Drivers use their horns much more frequently (and correctly) than they do in the States. When they need to make a turn, drivers are always ready and in the right position to do so – unlike in the States, where it isn’t uncommon to see someone make a right turn from a left lane, or vice versa, because they simply weren’t paying attention to where they were. In Beijing, if you aren’t paying attention, you are going to be in serious trouble.

In essence, you have two schools of thought about driving. The American one says: we will make the rules as restrictive as possible so that any dummy can successfully navigate from Point A to Point B. The Chinese one says: you’re on your own, dummy, don’t do anything stupid (and if you do, it’s your fault). Both ways of thinking have merit, but for either to work, everyone has to be playing by the same rules.

I think the comments here about honking are interesting, because in America, the horn is not an instrument of navigation, it is a way to express annoyance. The horn’s real purpose is to alert other drivers of your presence in situations where they may not know you are there, and this is how it is used in most other places. To an American, though, it sounds like a lot of pissed off drivers.

30

I had never run into this particular stereotype before. I am bemused.

31

When I lived in Northern California in the 1980s, I do remember this being a stereotype. A big Asian population there.

Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago I looked up racial differences in auto accidents because I was curious if that had anything to do with very high insurance rates in predominantly black cities, such as Detroit. What I learned from sources such as the CDC and NHTSA was that for most racial groups (white, black, Hispanic), there was no difference.

The two outliers were Asians, who had a very much lower incidence of auto-accident-related fatalities and native Americans, who had a much higher rate. Attributed mainly to alcohol use or infrequency of such, as also pointed out in Cecil’s column.

Also I think delius has a good point. I’ve never visited anywhere in the far East but I have driven quite a bit on several different continents. I’ve always said that driving like the locals do (including frequent horn usage, which is fun) is the best way to have a stress- and accident-free driving experience.

32

My two cents: Not surprisingly, someone who learned to drive as an adult (e.g. someone who grew up in a country where cars are/were uncommon) will have less experience than someone who learned to drive as a teenager and kept driving as an adult.

33

I’ve heard of this stereotype, though I haven’t noticed any one group being at fault–everybody’s a shitty driver, including me. However, it did not prevent me from saying, when I saw a sign for the New Delhi Driving School, “You have to go to school to drive that bad?” Yeah, I know, but I never ignore low-hanging fruit. :frowning:

34

Cecil should come to Cambridge, Massachusetts in late August/early September, when the new clutch of Harvard/MIT students arrive, driving rental trucks. He might change his mind.

35

Asians who have learned to drive in Asia will be considered bad drivers by Westerners. They certainly drive without much concern for safety. In my personal experience, they are far more likely to ignore traffic laws than the typical Western driver, and the police are sporadic in their enforcement.

What really drives me up the wall is how so many people don’t their babies in car seats.

I hate driving in Seoul, but visiting other Asian cities has made me realize Seoul is relatively Westernized compared to places like China or Vietnam. (Japan is the only other Asian city where I feel that it’s safe to assume cars will stop at a red light.)

36

Cecil posits his theory of good drivers/bad drivers based on traffic fatalities.

He doesn’t say whether the nationality of the driver who was at fault was listed, or how many fatalities were caused by that bad driver.

For example, a bad Russian driver might cause a three car pileup with multiple fatalities. One car has one dead white American. Another car has 5 dead Columbians. The last car has 2 dead Chinese.

Would Cecil say that the Columbian was the worst driver because there were 5 dead people in his car?

And the original bad Russian driver might have walked away from the crash.

37

You ought to see how many people carry their babies on motorcycles in Thailand.

40

And a nitpick: Those are Colombians, not Columbians.

41

Hi Cecil,

The article describes that Asians have low accident rates. That still doesn’t clarify whether Asians are good drivers or not, it just proves that they avoid accidents. This could be low usage of motor vehicles, low drinking etc.

The fact is (and I know this first-hand since I am from India) that in India, you can get a driver’s license for a motor vehicle by just paying about 50$ (as of 2014) even if you have never sat in a car even as a passenger. In-fact, if you shell a bit more, you don’t even have to see the face of DMV there. You can get a license in India while sitting in USA for about 100$.
To make matters worst, some states in US (New Jersey for one) gives a license to anyone holding an Indian license (or other Asian countries) without a road test. The person can then transfer that license to other states by writing just an exam.
There, so someone who gets a license in an Asian country, doesn’t know how to drive a car can get a US license, is eligible to drive and buy a car.

If you want more proof that Asians are bad drivers, all you need to do is stand next to a stop sign in New jersey or New York and count the ethnicity of people who drive through without stopping. You can get good empirical data. This may not prove that Asians are bad drivers genetically or inherently, but practicality is a different story.

PS: If an Asian jumps a stop sign, hits a Caucasian who had a teeny too much Martini, guess what the statistic will show at fault.

42

My observation in California is not that Asians are bad drivers, but that old people tend to be poorer drivers, and it is difficult to see if an Asian driver is older because their skin seems to wrinkle less and they often dye their hair. Otherwise, they drive as well or as poor as anyone else.