Expat Observations: U-turns
If there’s anything from living in Washington, DC that prepared me for living in Beijing, it has to be spending the previous four and half years living on Georgia Avenue. I know what you’re thinking, ‘But David, Georgia Ave and Beijing are nothing alike.’
Au contraire, mon ami. They very much are. Well, at least in this one very narrow aspect…bad driving maneuvers, specifically U-Turns.
Folks here, like folks driving up and down Georgia Avenue, have an overwhelming propensity to pull random U-turns. Just yesterday, I saw a driver make one showing total disregard for folks coming in the opposite direction. When I observed him through his windshield, it was clear he had no clue that several cars and scooters were coming at him in the other lane.
Once he made his decision, he only focused on turning around by any means necessary. No glance over the shoulder. No quick peak to see if the coast was clear. No wave suggesting contrition for the chaos he caused.
A few days before, on a busy north-south corridor near our condo, a driver attempted one of these turns from a red light. His light turns green, and he jams his steering wheel to the left just as he accelerates. Of course, the nature of the intersection and the narrow space available to make a maneuver like that work means he didn’t quite make it.
The road was already filled with cars as it was midday on a weekend. His failed attempt meant he blocked traffic and had to back up into the intersection and move forward again before completing the maneuver. And as folks do in cities worldwide, the drivers blocked by this guy’s poorly executed U-turn began honking nearly in unison.
I see this last scenario play out nearly every day–if not in the same spot, then somewhere else around the city. What makes this a curious endeavor is that they could pull it off if they just tried to go forward a little bit before yanking their steering wheel to the left. But, I suppose the counter to that is cars coming in the opposite direction will already have entered the intersection by that time, thus making it impossible for the driver to make a U-turn.
This, I suppose, means the drivers are making an active choice to pick the most inconsiderate option. But I honestly don’t know the alternative because I don’t know where the parking spots are or where the drivers are headed to begin with.
On Georgia Avenue, some cases were equally as bad. Once, in the middle of rush hour traffic, a driver in the southbound right-hand lane pulled a u-turn into on-rushing traffic, miraculously hitting no one, only to stop once headed in the opposite direction to double park next to Walmart. As I peeked in my rearview mirror and saw nothing but brake lights heading north, I saw the driver hop out, pop the trunk, and mozy to the curb to help someone put their groceries in the opened trunk. Nonplussed, unbothered, and undaunted by the chaos he caused.
A few weeks later, as I was headed in the same direction, the car directly in front of me made a quick left turn, directing his vehicle between two parked cars. I thought maybe he had had some medical issue and would bounce up over the curb and fly headlong into the parking lot on the other side. I was wrong. In the middle of oncoming traffic, he slowed as he neared the curb, made a complete stop, threw it in reverse, and did an ass-backward turnabout. Then, he turned into the parking lot entrance a few dozen meters before him.
I understood but questioned his logic because, just ahead of him, before he pulled that cumbersome u-turn, he could have taken a left onto a quiet side street at the next intersection. And there, he could have found an even more accessible entrance to the parking lot. Or he could have just turned where the entrance was to begin with.
The bottom line is this: no matter where you are or where you’re driving, you must always keep your head on a swivel. Anything can happen. Drivers, no matter where they’re from, will always find a way to confound expectations.