Last week I had the pleasure of spending time as a tourist in Shanghai. It is a beautiful city and I highly recommend a visit. Over the next few days (i.e. as I remember things) I will post about various parts of it. However one thing is extremely important for all people visiting Shanghai. There are no road rules. While the over-arching political system is authoritarian Communism, the roads work on complete anarchy. When you have three near-death experiences in a single cab ride you realise your life insurance needs updating.

The roads of Shanghai are wide are well-planned. This means the what appears to be three lanes actually ends up being eight. In the rules of the road it must read "Gaps are a waste and your patriotic duty is to fill it as soon as possible". In many places you give way to anything bigger or faster than you. Not in Shanghai. Rusty taxis built in 1965 have just as much right to fill that impossibly small space as anyone else, including the thousands of bicyclists all fighting for the same space. Traffic lights are obviously considered mere guidelines. Green means go. Yellow means go. Red means go. Turning at intersections involves a careful dash between oncoming traffic, random pedestrians and even more random bikes. All in front of the ubiquitous traffic police, who's main job is to point and shake fingers at cars that actually obey traffic lights.

What is truly amazing is in four days I did not witness one accident. Somehow. On the other hand China has 300 traffic related deaths a day. A day. That is 110,000 deaths a year. Not to mention the 1,500 injuries each day (560,000 a year). And don't think it is because the country is so populous.

"According to our research, the death toll and death rate per 10,000 automobiles here is eight times more than that in America," he said.

The most important factor was still the negligence of drivers. Statistics showed that last year some 78.5 per cent of the deaths, about 86,000 people, were caused by improper driving.