Why Volvo is testing 100 autonomous cars in China, and why Google should too

I remember the moment I thought I was going to die.

Everyone who’s lived in China for an extended period of time has some car-related horror stories. But there’s always that one that stands out. For me, it’s not the time a van plowed into the back of a public bus I was riding in the icy Harbin winter, or even the time and friend and I were chased out of a cab by violent (and probably very drunk) thugs who started attacking the driver for picking up foreigners. No, my scariest moment in Chinese traffic was in the back of Zhou Jian’s SUV.

I was too busy wondering if my heart had stopped to pay attention to the speedometer

Zhou Jian (not his real name) was one of two drivers employed at the school where I worked, which was owned by a high-level provincial police official. The main driver, Huang Gang, was a pleasant and conversational ex-cop who was nearly always dispatched to drive teachers and who drove like he’d memorized the rules of the road. But Zhou was really our boss’s driver. On the rare occasions he was dispatched to shuttle lowly teachers around, he drove in sullen silence, blasting techno music and moving at what often seemed like relativistic speeds.

Because he was a police official’s driver, Zhou’s SUV had government plates and a window sticker that – I was told – essentially gave him carte blanche. I had seen him throw a thick file folder of papers out the window on the highway, weave dangerously in and out of urban traffic at speeds approaching 115 kmph, and drive at night with his lights off. Whatever road laws China had obviously didn’t apply to Zhou.

Photo credit: yakobusan Jakob Montrasio 孟亚柯

But it wasn’t until my final ride with Zhou that I actually thought I might die. We were headed to the airport, and we were not making particularly good time. Rounding a corner, we saw that the block ahead was completely congested going our direction. It didn’t even appear to be moving. Across the concrete divider, though, the oncoming traffic was flowing freely. Cursing under his breath, Zhou leaned on the accelerator and swerved into the oncoming traffic.

What followed was a full two city blocks of weaving through oncoming traffic in the wrong lane at what certainly felt like highway speeds. I have no idea how fast we were really going – I was too busy wondering if my heart had stopped to pay attention to the speedometer – but it doesn’t matter. I say this from experience: any speed is too fast when you’re driving in the wrong lane into oncoming traffic.

To Zhou’s credit, we survived completely unscathed, and when we pulled back into the right lane while illegally crossing an intersection, Zhou shot me a look of contempt that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d done that – and why was I being so dramatic about it? I was hyperventilating in the backseat, wondering whether I’d just seen a demonstration of extreme skill, incredible luck, or both.

A true challenge

China’s roads are safer now than they were back then, but they’re still incredibly dangerous. According to the WHO, at least 200,000 people die on China’s roads each year, an accident fatality rate that’s nearly double that of the US, and nearly ten times higher then developed European countries like the UK and Sweden.

And of course, China’s traffic problems don’t end with unsafe driving. The country is also one of the world’s worst when it comes to traffic jams, and it has played host to some truly terrible traffic scenarios, like 2012’s 12-day 62-mile-long nightmare, or this monstrosity from last fall:

Of Volvo and Google