Risky Riding

Car ownership in the city has skyrocketed, with the Ministry of Public Security estimating that around two-thirds of households now own a car. In 2004 the city had just 2 million cars. However, driving quality has yet to catch up with driving prevalence and the rules of the road, to say nothing of the lack of driving etiquette.　

Just this week a black Mercedes sedan powering through a red light at an intersection next to the Second Ring Road almost left me resembling what a piñata looks like when the local little league’s big hitter takes a swing – at least, if it was filled with innards and oatmeal instead of candy.　

Luckily I slammed on my bike’s ageing brakes just early enough to miss the car, but still leaving me close enough to the speeding car to smell the cigarette the driver was smoking. 　

I have cycled the 7 kilometers to work every day, smog or shine, for the last three years and I think I’ve had at least 10 serious close calls that have left me quaking and hundreds of minor incidents that have left me mumbling obscenities under my breath. 　

Most of the time when a driver makes a right turn at an intersection without looking up from their WeChat or a pedestrian decides, like a particularly suicidal lemming, that sidewalk rules apply in the bike/tricycle/daredevil in a Baidu Waimai uniform world of the bicycle lane and forgets to look left and right before wandering into traffic, a tap on the brakes and a swift turn are usually enough to avoid disaster, but luck is a finite resource.　

So far, my worst accident came when someone leapt into my path at an intersection, forcing me to brake hard and slide a few feet across the road surface, tearing a hole in my jeans, bruising my leg and giving me my first taste of the capital’s asphalt (it tasted of ash with just a hint of dog droppings). 　

After that accident, which could have ended quite badly for me, I decided I needed to do something to make myself safer on my commute. So I bought a very loud electronic bell for my bike that I preemptively strike if I suspect someone is thinking about their Chinese Dream instead of where they are going.　

While cycling at top speed though Beijing traffic is perhaps the most obviously risky thing I do every day, it is just one of the risks I’ve chosen to heighten by deciding to move from the UK to China. I breathe in cancer-causing smog which in 2012 the World Health Organization said kills 1 million Chinese nationally in 2012; the vegetables I buy from the grocers in my hutong are as far away from organic as vegetables can get without growing arms and chopping themselves; and at least once a month I get stricken by the entirely justified paranoia that the pavement beneath me is going to open up and I’ll get sucked into the city’s famously ineffective sewerage system.　

But cycling – its risks being more of the short-term brain-leaving-skull variety than the lets-discuss-our-options-regarding-treatment kind and seem to be directly managed by my own reflexes and judgment – gives me the illusion of control over my well-being. Every thrilling high-speed journey from A to B that sees me aggressively exploiting gaps in the traffic to give me more time at work (to fiddle on my phone and wander around drinking coffee) sends my subconscious the subliminal message that I’ll somehow be able to avoid the other dangers of the city and that my life expectancy will stay around the UK’s 79.4 years rather than China’s 74.6. 　

I could do more to protect myself from these long and short term risks. I could be more conscientious about wearing a face mask in those weeks where the Sun’s existence is more a matter of faith than certainty. I could become a member of one the collective farms out in Shunyi and get organic vegetables delivered to my door. I could stay indoors to avoid any surprise sinkholes and wear the helmet my future father-in-law gave me. But who could possibly be bothered with all that? I take my cues from the people around me and do my best to ignore the risks and hope that they figure out how to grow organs in tanks before mine conk out.