So red means go, and green means stop… right?
I was standing in the middle of the road today, and as I happily daydreamed a little while waiting for a couple of buses to hurtle past on either side, came to the realisation that I have finally settled back in to the Chinese way of crossing the road.
It always takes me a while.
I have begun psyching myself up to start driving here now, as it may come in handy to be confident enough to take a large machine out onto these roads sometime. Unfortunately the more I try and understand the secret Hefei driving code, the more confused I become.
My most recent observation is the slight overuse of green traffic lights.
It is perfectly normal to drive into the oncoming traffic when turning left here (where we drive on the right side), and no one seems to mind at all, bicycles, cars and trucks all expect such behaviour and are content to weave their way around.
The thing that has confused me recently is the fact that despite us having a green turning arrow, we are still finding ourselves barrelling through the oncoming traffic. The oncoming traffic, that is, that really should have a red light whilst our arrow to drive across them is green.
I had at first thought this was an amusing fault with one intersection near our home, but have since discovered that it is a trait common to most intersections here.
I pointed out the oddity to Patrick who simply replied, as if I am just a little slow, that “yes, it’s green so you can go, you just have to look.”
So now I must get used to the fact that a green light doesn’t necessarily mean you can actually go when turning left… in addition to the fact that it is legal here to turn right against a red light…
There must be some logic to this somewhere.
Possibly driving at night will be easier, as they just switch all the lights to flash orange instead.
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