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Driving in Shanghai

No, I have not had the opportunity to drive here yet, however, if given the chance, I don't think I'd want to! The traffic is insane here. There are so many people, so many cars & so many crazy traffic patterns and rules that are not followed.

First off, no one wears seat belts. In every taxi, bus, or car I've been in, none of them has had seat belts. I'm not sure why, as they have the same cars that we do back home, BMW, Volkswagen, Buick, Nissan, etc. Another interesting safety feature that is missing here is the car seat. I've seen small children in cars in their mother's laps & climbing around in the back seat, as they are not belted into any seat because there are no seat belts.  

Second, the traffic lights don't seem to mean too much, as people on bikes, mopeds and even cars zoom through red lights. On nice thing they have on the lights here is a countdown as to when the lights are going to change, either from green to red or red to green. This however, makes drives impatient and as the countdown comes to about 03, they lay on the gas! Also there are many one way streets, in fact, it is much like the crazy streets of downtown Boston, you need to know the lay of the land to get where you need to go. Fortunately bicyclists  and moped drivers don't have to follow any of these one way road rules as there is always a lane in either direction for them, and if there is no lane, they just drive on the sidewalk!

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