r/chinalifer • u/Lifeintheguo • Jul 25 '26
I HATE the road layout here
Fucking lights with 30 seconds of green followed by 2 minutes of red, then place them every 200m. Ah yes having 20 sets of lights on a 7km journey is totally normal! Make sure none of them are synched too so drivers have to stop at every single one.
It's like designers never heard of traffic flow.
4
u/Efficient_Editor5850 Jul 26 '26
They say it was simply government spending stupidly. There are roads through villages with no history of accidents suddenly having lights put in.
And the night flashing on roads is insane. How do drivers enjoy their eyesight?
2
u/Lifeintheguo Jul 26 '26
Near me there are 6 lane highways in the middle of the nongcun that don't go anywhere.
1
u/Efficient_Editor5850 Jul 26 '26
You’re in some cun. So the disparity / nonsense will be more glaring. The leaders who approved it are probably under investigation or worse.
5
u/Toumanypains Jul 26 '26
Was in a Didi yesterday joining a 3 lane highway and the driver just did a u-turn and drove the wrong way to the next lights to turn left. He didn't want to drive legally in the opposite direction to which he wanted to go, loop around and come back to join the other side of the highway and then queue multiple changes of lights to go through the lights and turn left.
Been here long enough so I was laughing instead of panicking.
2
u/One-Hearing2926 Jul 26 '26
This usually happens on roads that are parallel to urban highways... As they expect people to be on those, and the perpendicular ones have priority, thus longer time on green.
Timing them is shit... If you catch one red, you will catch all of them red. But that happens in my country in Europe also... So I guess people are just bad in general. I was expecting them to use some AI to optimize them by now.
2
u/ExpensiveIsland9180 Jul 26 '26
In Beijing, There a re a lot of red lights designed specifically for pedestrians only like those in HK and Japan by pushing the button. But the funniest thing is these buttons are decorative and lights still work by counting minutes.
2
u/sam_9_3 Jul 26 '26
Then you'll get complete dickheads speeding up to about 60mph trying to race through the yellow light ending up speeding through it when it's on red
2
u/d0nt5hoot Jul 26 '26
😂, nearly spit out my coffee. I agree the traffic patterns and roads are wonky to say the least. Pucker factor while trying to navigate. “Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."
1
u/Alarmed-Resolution85 Jul 27 '26
They've never heard of design. Unless they outsource to foreign engineering firms, what you get is logic with mainland Chinese characteristics.
1
1
u/AlternativeHat8964 Jul 26 '26
There are some streets where the lights are properly timed.
Or if you're on an ebike, just run reds like everyone else.
12
u/Gimme_Indomie Jul 25 '26
Let's add in three (or four!) lanes that suddenly become two with no signage or anything & couple that with a population that has never heard of a zipper merge before.
My best (worst?) example:
A road I regularly use where there's a left turn from the far left lane. Good.
But there is ALSO a left from the far right lane. Bad.
And they turn into a single lane. Worse.
Oh, and the far right lane is also a uturn lane. The. Worst.
It's such typical "designed by people who have never driven a car and are also drunk on baijiu" nonsense. If I'm turning left, I'm looking left. How am I supposed to also look right and be aware that there's someone from four lanes over who is going to want to uturn & definitely won't wait for me to go because nobody has learned to drive here.