Sasha: Welcome to another video
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So guys I'd like you to come along with me for a little bit of a walk
And I'd like to tell you about something that happened to me about a month ago. Now - It's at the same time funny a
A little bit annoying, and also very disturbing - all at the same time
You all know that I have a car right here in China been driving a car for over six years now
I'd say, yeah, over six years and
Actually lately, I've stopped driving as much as before because, to be honest
Driving in Shenzhen is just becoming too much of a pain in the arse
it's expensive, and when I say expensive, I mean it's expensive because
Parking rates are expensive. They've introduced all sorts of new
special fines; there are certain roads that you cannot drive on during the day, if you have a certain license plate.
A Lot of Rules which are very unclear, especially if you don't
understand the the Chinese
bulletin boards that they put up. They've got led signs and
sometimes they just changed the rules and they stick it up there
And you could be driving along blissfully and getting, you know, big fines and points off your license
So it's actually a pain in the arse, so don't drive that much
I still do drive, at least once a week though, up to my shop in HuiZhou and this is where this thing happened
Okay, so here's the story. I was driving up to the shop on a Monday morning, as I usually do, quite early and
As I was getting onto the highway, you know there's like an on-ramp
This guy, sort of came out of nowhere, really aggressively in his... he had like, an old Buick
Revving and swerving and just doing crazy stuff, right?
next to me
And he kind of intimidating all the traffic around us and so like a lot of people just peeled off or slowed down
But he came right next to me and he was like, I don't know what the hell
He was doing, so revving and swerving towards me the whole time. So I was like, you know screw this guy. He's dangerous
he's trying to run me off the road here, so I just
Accelerated and I went past like basically went past him on the emergency lane because this guy was just all over the place
Right? So anyway I passed him carried on and
That was that
then
couple weeks later I
receive a fine because you get these apps that you can track if you've got traffic fines or not and
I received a fine saying
That I had received a ￥3,000 RMB fine, and I was like what the hell
That's a lot of money and six points off my license
Now 3,000 RMB is roughly $500 US dollars, little less, but it's about $500 US dollars
So it's not like a small amount of money here. I'm talking about it's like a month's rent
So I
was like you know what I'm going to go down to the station and
check it out like what the hell's going on, so I went down with my fiancée to the the traffic police station and
they've got a computer there and
On the computer you can type in your your car details
You know your license plate and your registration vin number and stuff and it shows you the pictures and sure enough
there I am going over the emergency lane on the highway and
the photo is from a Dashcam and
It's I can see by the color of the car. It's that bloody buick that aggressive horrible driver buick
So it's like what the hell's going on here. How can I get a fine first of all the ridiculously high fine like that and
It's from someone's Dashcam
Well, here's the rub here's what what really is the whole deal with this situation is driving in China is somewhat of a free-for-all to
Be honest, it's a very chaotic
People are very selfish in the way. They drive. I've explained this before in in other videos in the past, but basically if you don't
try to squeeze in you'll never get in and
It's very frustrating so in order to try and combat this situation the ShenZhen government has enacted a new law
where you basically get to
tattletale on fellow drivers and by doing so
They get big fines and it dissuades them from doing bad things in traffic. What people can do is if people drive badly and
If they take a photo you can take a photo with your phone or your dash cam or whatever
you can send it in to the traffic police and
they will reward you so
Basically they give you about ￥50 RMB if they successfully managed to find the offender
So what happens is they send the offender some really big
fine and then they pay the reward to the
Tattletale guy who sent in the picture, right?
So what that guy done has essentially run me off the road to make ￥50 RMB. Which is
disgusting because it ended up costing me almost five hundred us dollars
so what this is now cause this is cause people like that damn buick
To go out there and on purpose try to entrap people in order to make money
And this infuriates me because this is just like the lowest of the low scum kind of stuff, right?
but it seems to be the case and
Basically I asked my fiancee
And she looked it up on on weibo and stuff and apparently this is what people are doing
they'll do things like go in the in the slow lane of the you know of the road the highway or the
Whatever road, and drive like incredibly slow like five kilometers an hour
To kind of really annoy the people behind them so they get frustrated
And then they pass them and then they snap the picture and send it off and get money
And I was reading one of those weibo put posts with somebody like in one sitting made you know
450 RMB because nine cars passed them
So you know here we go another little scam here to watch out for if you're driving in China
if someone seems to be baiting you into
Breaking the Road rules crossing over a white line going into the emergency lane something like that just ignore them
Or find a safe way to get around them
Because I had no choice. I had to pay the fine it was
Painful because it was right before the holiday
But there we go there was nothing I could do
There's no recourse they've got me on camera going over the emergency lane on the highway
Here are the pictures and so that was that right guys so basically the message here is when you're driving in China
especially down in the south of China here remain extra vigilant
Of course there's a lot of Chaos you have to watch out for cars and people and various things coming onto the road
but now you have to watch out for scammers, too
That's it really, oh, but speaking of driving. You know my little Chinese car it now has over
90,000 kilometers on the
odometer
so
I'm going to make a video very soon where we take a look at it and see what's going wrong over the years and just
How well it's held up being a cheap Chinese car
So yes, I don't want to end off on a negative note
Things are actually pretty good except for the weather as you can see around me is a little cold at the moment
So I'll see you guys in the next video and until then as always stay awesome
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