My Husband Will Drive Around the Block Again Just to Look at a Woman Again
Driven to Kill
Why drivers in China intentionally impale the pedestrians they hitting.
Photo by Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images
In April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in Cathay'south Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-erstwhile girl and rolled over her caput. As the girl's grandmother shouted, "Stop! You've striking a child!" the BMW'due south driver paused, then switched into contrary and backed up over the girl. The woman at the bicycle drove forrard once again, burdensome the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family unit a bargain: "Don't say that I was driving the car," she said. "Say it was my married man. We can give you lot coin."
It seems similar a crazy urban legend: In Mainland china, drivers who have injured pedestrians volition sometimes so endeavor to kill them. And yet not only is it truthful, it's fairly mutual; security cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and along on top of victims to make sure that they are expressionless. The Chinese language even has an adage for the phenomenon: "It is improve to hit to kill than to hitting and injure."
This 2008 telly report features security camera footage of a dusty white Passat reversing at high speed and smashing into a 64-year-old grandmother. The Passat'southward dorsum wheels bounce upwardly over her head and body. The driver, Zhao Xiao Cheng, stops the automobile for a moment then hits the gas, causing his front wheels to roll over the woman. And then Zhao shifts into bulldoze, wheels grinding the woman into the pavement. Zhao is non done. Twice more he shifts back and forth between drive and contrary, each time thudding over the grandmother's torso. He then speeds away from her corpse.
Incredibly, Zhao was found not guilty of intentional homicide. Accepting Zhao'south claim that he thought he was driving over a trash handbag, the court of Taizhou in Zhejiang province sentenced him to just iii years in prison for "negligence." Zhao'southward case was unusual only in that it was caught on video. As the television anchor noted, "You tin encounter online an countless stream of stories talking about cases like to this one."
"Double-hitting cases" have been around for decades. I offset heard of the "hit-to-impale" miracle in Taiwan in the mid-1990s when I was working there as an English teacher. A beau teacher would drive us to classes. Afterward ane near-miss of a motorcyclist, he said, "If I hitting someone, I'll hitting him again and make certain he'south dead." Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured person's care for a lifetime. But if y'all impale the person, yous "only have to pay one time, like a burial fee." He insisted he was serious—and that this was mutual.
Well-nigh people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at to the lowest degree in part from perverse laws on victim bounty. In Prc the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $l,000—and once payment is fabricated, the affair is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime intendance for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care. Drivers who determine to hit-and-kill practice then because killing is far more economical. Indeed, Zhao Xiao Cheng—the man defenseless on a security camera video driving over a grandmother 5 times—concluded up paying merely about $70,000 in compensation.
In 2010 in Xinyi, video captured a wealthy boyfriend reversing his BMW X6 out of a parking spot. He hits a 3-year-old boy, knocking the kid to the ground and rolling over his skull. The driver then shifts his BMW into drive and crushes the child again. Remarkably, the driver then gets out of the BMW, puts the vehicle in reverse, and guides it with his hand as he walks the vehicle backward over the male child'southward crumpled torso. The man'south foot is so close to the toddler's head that, if alive, the male child could take reached out and touched him. The driver and then puts the BMW in bulldoze again, running over the boy one terminal fourth dimension as he drives away.
Hither as well, the commuter was charged only with accidentally causing a person'due south expiry. (He claimed to accept dislocated the boy with a paper-thin box or trash bag.) Constabulary rejected charges of murder and fifty-fifty of fleeing the scene of the offense, ignoring the fact that the driver ran over the male child's head as he sped away.
These drivers are willing to kill not simply because it is cheaper, but also considering they expect to escape murder charges. In the days before video cameras became widespread, information technology was rare to take evidence that a driver hit the victim twice. Even in today's age of cellphone cameras, drivers seem confident that they can either bribe local officials or hire a lawyer to evade murder charges.
Perhaps the most horrific of these striking-to-kill cases are the ones in which the initial standoff didn't hurt the victim seriously, and yet the driver came back and killed the victim anyhow. In Sichuan province, an enormous, dirt-encrusted truck knocked down a 2-yr-former boy. The toddler was only mazed by the initial accident, and immediately climbed to his anxiety. Eyewitnesses said that the boy went to fetch his umbrella, which had been thrown beyond the street by the impact, when the truck reversed and crushed him, this time killing him.
Despite the eyewitness testimony, the canton chief of law declared that the truck had never reversed, never hit the boy a 2nd time, and that the wheels never rolled over the child. Meanwhile, 1 outraged website posted photographs appearing to testify the child'south body under the truck's front wheel.
In each of these cases, despite video and photographs showing that the driver hit the victim a second, and often even a third, fourth, and fifth time, the drivers ended up paying the same or less in compensation and jail time than they would have if they had just injured the victim.
With and then many striking-to-kill drivers escaping serious punishment, the Chinese public has sometimes taken matters into its ain hands. In 2013 a oversupply in Zhengzhou in Henan province beat a wealthy driver who killed a half dozen-yr-onetime after allegedly running him over twice. (A television report claims the crowd had acted on "imitation rumors." However, at to the lowest degree v witnesses assert on camera that the human had run over the child a 2nd time.)
Of course, non every hit-to-kill commuter escapes serious punishment. A human being named Yao Jiaxin who in 2010 striking a bicyclist in Xian and returned to brand sure she was expressionless—even stabbing the injured woman with a knife—was bedevilled and executed. In 2022 a driver named Zhang Qingda who had striking an elderly man in Jiayu Laissez passer in Gansu province with his pickup truck and circled around to crush the man again was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Both Communist china and Taiwan have passed laws attempting to eradicate striking-to-kill cases. Taiwan'due south legislature reformed Article 6 of its Civil Code, which had long restricted the ability to bring civil lawsuits on behalf of others (such as a person killed in a traffic accident). Meanwhile, China'southward legislature has emphasized that multiple-striking cases should exist treated as murders. Yet even when a driver hits a victim multiple times, it can be hard to prove intent and causation—at least to the satisfaction of Red china's courts. Judges, police, and media oft seem to have rather unbelievable claims that the drivers hit the victims multiple times accidentally, or that the drivers confused the victims with inanimate objects.
Hit-to-kill cases continue, and hit-to-kill drivers regularly escape serious punishment. In January a woman was defenseless on video repeatedly driving over an old man who had slipped in the snowfall. In April a school motorcoach commuter in Shuangcheng was accused of driving over a five-year-old girl again and once more. In May a security camera filmed a truck driver running over a immature boy four times; the driver claimed that he had never noticed the child.
And last month the unlicensed woman who had killed the 2-twelvemonth-old in the fruit market with her BMW—and then offered to bribe the family unit—was brought to court. She claimed the killing was an accident. Prosecutors accustomed her assertion, and recommended that the court reduce her sentence to two to four years in prison.
This light sentence would withal exist more than of a penalisation than many drivers have received for similar crimes. Simply it probably won't exist plenty to go on the next commuter from putting his auto in reverse and hit the gas.
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/why-drivers-in-china-intentionally-kill-the-pedestrians-they-hit-chinas-laws-have-encouraged-the-hit-to-kill-phenomenon.html
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