7 eye cycling
If you are riding a bicycle in China, beware – grow 5 more eyes and keep them all wide open at all times!
This will be a little wearying I guess, but it’s important enough – keep reading.
I want to give you two examples that happened to me (see the below video), and how to avoid them.
First scenario:
As you can see in the video, there is a taxi that obviously going to turn right, now, as I ride in around 35KPH – I want to overtake the driver, in order to not slow down I go a little to the left, aiming to pass him as he turns.
BUT, there is this jeep, which the driver is not the coolest one – and he’s also overtaking the taxi – from the left while turning right.
So as you can see, I pass between them, barely make it out without bumping into the jeep – the reason I didn’t hit the jeep is that I was very aware of what’s going on and some luck!
Conclusion: drive according the road limitation, don’t pass cars, and don’t go on the road!
Second scenario:
I rode after someone that blocked my sight ahead, then he maneuvered left and right – I though he’s giving me space, but no, he was avoiding a scooter that was driving the wrong way – since I was eager to overtake, I faced a fall.
I had 3 options, one is to turn right and hit the big rickshaw, no thanks, second was to hit the scooter head on and third was to throw myself left and hope for the best – that’s what I did, and luckily enough – nothing happened.
As you can see in the video there’s a traffic jam, but if not – my bicycle were likely to be run over and broken to pieces!
By the way, after analyzing the video over and over, if I would have hit the brakes hard and go to the right side I might have been able to go behind the rickshaw, but I didn’t take that chance because if I would hit it – the result would have been way worse.
Conclusion: ride safe, don’t be eager to overtake, you can wait one minute and see that it’s all clear!
Or – go ride out of the city – that might solve a lot of problems:)
See the video below – please ride safe!
