I’ve been driving since I was 16 and have never been involved in a road accident. Never been involved until today. Twenty of these driving years, including today, have been in Beijing.
Driving in Beijing in some ways is much, much easier than it was 20 years ago. The drivers are much better. The roads are great. GPS. Fewer pedestrians crossing the street at random. Traffic laws are generally obeyed. It’s unusual to see a car going through red lights or the wrong direction in a bike lane.
Driving in Beijing in some ways is much worse than 20 years ago. Congestion is broad. You need to obey the traffic laws or the cameras will tag you. Electric scooters are everywhere and the waimai delivery people are fearless. And people text while driving.
That’s what happened today. I was in a traffic lane that wasn’t moving. My 16 year old daughter, Elisa, was in the passenger seat. Kobe, our dog was in the back seat. A NIO SUV was directly behind us, also not moving. Who was moving? A mid size SUV coming up on the NIO SUV. That driver was checking a message on his phone. I heard a screech and then a whack followed a split second later by our car being whacked. A good whack. Seat belts held me and Elisa. Kobe flew up against the back seat. No airbags deployed and we were all ok, just a little shaken. I told Elisa I’d need her to help translate how to handle the accident with the other drivers since after 20 years I can’t speak Chinese.
Since I’ve been driving here and really since we got our new car last year, I’ve been paranoid about getting into an accident. That I’d be driving alone somewhere and get into an accident and wouldn’t be able to communicate. I looked up the process on Deepseek and generally knew it but dreaded the interacting part. In the old days, the process was simple if not easy - negotiate a price with who caused the accident.
On this day, (with Elisa translating) the driver who slammed into the SUV immediately took full responsibility. He gave us his number and seems to think that was enough. I asked Elisa to ask the SUV driver about the process and she didn’t know - she called her daughter. I called Sabrina and she asked NIO support for the process. It was simple, call a specific number and the police would come to the scene and file a report including blame. After a short wait, the police officer arrived. Tall (compared with me), young (again …), and friendly (again …) he took pictures, walked around the scene, and collected our information. When done, he printed out the report and said we could leave. Just before he finished, a van with two NIO support staff showed up to help us and the SUV driver. They said it was ok to drive and continue our errands but would be good to get to their repair shop soon. Which we did.