"Hit to Kill" in China

[Laconian]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/09/why_drivers_in_china_intentionally_kill_the_pedestrians_they_hit_china_s.single.html

Driven to Kill
Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit.
By Geoffrey Sant
Look both ways: Pedestrians wait for the light to change in central Beijing on Sept. 18, 2007.
Photo by Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images
n April a BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China's Guangdong
province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl's
grandmother shouted, "Stop! You've hit a child!" the BMW's driver paused, then
switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove
forward once more, crushing the girl for a third time. When she finally got out from
the BMW, the unlicensed driver immediately offered the horrified family a deal: "Don't
say that I was driving the car," she said. "Say it was my husband. We can give you
money."
It seems like a crazy urban legend: In China, drivers who have injured pedestrians will
sometimes then try to kill them. And yet not only is it true, it's fairly common; security
cameras have regularly captured drivers driving back and forth on top of victims to
make sure that they are dead. The Chinese language even has an adage for the
phenomenon: "It is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure."
Advertisement
This 2008 television report features security camera footage of a dusty white Passat
reversing at high speed and smashing into a 64-year-old grandmother. The Passat's
back wheels bounce up over her head and body. The driver, Zhao Xiao Cheng, stops
the car for a moment then hits the gas, causing his front wheels to roll over the
woman. Then Zhao shifts into drive, wheels grinding the woman into the pavement.
Zhao is not done. Twice more he shifts back and forth between drive and reverse, each
time thudding over the grandmother's body. He then speeds away from her corpse.
Incredibly, Zhao was found not guilty of intentional homicide. Accepting Zhao's claim
that he thought he was driving over a trash bag, the court of Taizhou in Zhejiang
province sentenced him to just three years in prison for "negligence." Zhao's case was
unusual only in that it was caught on video. As the television anchor noted, "You can
see online an endless stream of stories talking about cases similar to this one."
"Double-hit cases" have been around for decades. I first heard of the "hit-to-kill"
phenomenon in Taiwan in the mid-1990s when I was working there as an English
teacher. A fellow teacher would drive us to classes. After one near-miss of a
motorcyclist, he said, "If I hit someone, I'll hit him again and make sure he's 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 you kill the person, you "only have to pay
once, like a burial fee." He insisted he was serious—and that this was common.
How Can This Possibly Happen?
Geoffrey Sant wrote about drivers in China who intentionally kill pedestrians.
A SLATE PLUS SPECIAL FEATURE:
Most people agree that the hit-to-kill phenomenon stems at least in part from
perverse laws on victim compensation. In China the compensation for killing a victim
in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to
$50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for
lifetime care 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 decide to hit-and-kill do so because killing is far more
economical. Indeed, Zhao Xiao Cheng—the man caught on a security camera video
driving over a grandmother five times—ended up paying only about $70,000 in
compensation.
In 2010 in Xinyi, video captured a wealthy young man reversing his BMW X6 out of a
parking spot. He hits a 3-year-old boy, knocking the child 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 boy's crumpled
body. The man's foot is so close to the toddler's head that, if alive, the boy could have
reached out and touched him. The driver then puts the BMW in drive again, running
over the boy one last time as he drives away.
Here too, the driver was charged only with accidentally causing a person's death. (He
claimed to have confused the boy with a cardboard box or trash bag.) Police rejected
charges of murder and even of fleeing the scene of the crime, ignoring the fact that
the driver ran over the boy's head as he sped away.
These drivers are willing to kill not only because it is cheaper, but also because they
expect to escape murder charges. In the days before video cameras became
widespread, it was rare to have 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.
Geoffrey Sant wrote about drivers in China who intentionally kill pedestrians.
Ask him anything.
Perhaps the most horrific of these hit-to-kill cases are the ones in which the initial
collision didn't injure the victim seriously, and yet the driver came back and killed the
victim anyway. In Sichuan province, an enormous, dirt-encrusted truck knocked down
a 2-year-old boy. The toddler was only dazed by the initial blow, and immediately
climbed to his feet. Eyewitnesses said that the boy went to fetch his umbrella, which
had been thrown across the street by the impact, when the truck reversed and
crushed him, this time killing him.
Despite the eyewitness testimony, the county chief of police declared that the truck
had never reversed, never hit the boy a second time, and that the wheels never rolled
over the child. Meanwhile, one outraged website posted photographs appearing to
show the child's 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
merely injured the victim.
With so many hit-to-kill drivers escaping serious punishment, the Chinese public has
sometimes taken matters into its own hands. In 2013 a crowd in Zhengzhou in Henan
province beat a wealthy driver who killed a 6-year-old after allegedly running him over
twice. (A television report claims the crowd had acted on "false rumors." However, at
least five witnesses assert on camera that the man had run over the child a second
time.)
Of course, not every hit-to-kill driver escapes serious punishment. A man named Yao
Jiaxin who in 2010 hit a bicyclist in Xian and returned to make sure she was dead—
even stabbing the injured woman with a knife—was convicted and executed. In 2014 a
driver named Zhang Qingda who had hit an elderly man in Jiayu Pass in Gansu
province with his pickup truck and circled around to crush the man again was
sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Both China and Taiwan have passed laws attempting to eradicate hit-to-kill cases.
Taiwan's 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's legislature has emphasized that multiple-hit cases
should be 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 China's
courts. Judges, police, and media often seem to accept 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 caught on video repeatedly driving over an old man who
had slipped in the snow. In April a school bus driver in Shuangcheng was accused of
driving over a 5-year-old girl again and again. In May a security camera filmed a truck
driver running over a young boy four times; the driver claimed that he had never
noticed the child.
And last month the unlicensed woman who had killed the 2-year-old in the fruit
market with her BMW—and then offered to bribe the family—was brought to court.
She claimed the killing was an accident. Prosecutors accepted her assertion, and
recommended that the court reduce her sentence to two to four years in prison.
This light sentence would still be more of a punishment than many drivers have
received for similar crimes. But it probably won't be enough to keep the next driver
from putting his car in reverse and hitting the gas.

[Eye of the Tiger]

Only in China...

[Raza]

I heard about this.  Definitely makes me never want to trust my life to any product designed by people who value life so little. 

It's hard not to be outraged reading about this, especially as so many of the cases cited were children.  Makes you want to go to war with these people.  People want to visit China and talk about the country's beauty and all that shit, but this is a reminder that it's a hellhole that I'd never want to visit.  Might as well go vacation in Afghanistan.  At least they have the decency to shoot you.

[MexicoCityM3]

I remember a Chinese tour guide (a few years ago I visited a city near Hong Kong) boasting about how his wife had to serve him forever because she knew that without him she would end up living under a bridge. The guy was very proud of this fact.

A British couple traveling on the same tour with us did exemplary stiff upper lips upon hearing that.

I have said it many times: I'd rather have the US as the world superpower by a lot. Trump and all. But don't push it.

[MX793]

Absolutely sickening.  IIRC, pedestrians also don't have the right-of-way in China, even in cross-walks.

[12,000 RPM]

I heard about this.  Definitely makes me never want to trust my life to any product designed by people who value life so little. 

It's hard not to be outraged reading about this, especially as so many of the cases cited were children.  Makes you want to go to war with these people.  People want to visit China and talk about the country's beauty and all that shit, but this is a reminder that it's a hellhole that I'd never want to visit.  Might as well go vacation in Afghanistan.  At least they have the decency to shoot you.

They dont design, they just build. All that said China is also low on my list of places to visit. They will not be around in 50 yrs.

[Rich]

My ex gf studied in China for a few years. She would talk a lot about how little value they have on human life. People injured in the street unable to stand with pedestrians just walking around the problem and cars just honking instead of helping.

[MX793]

My ex gf studied in China for a few years. She would talk a lot about how little value they have on human life. People injured in the street unable to stand with pedestrians just walking around the problem and cars just honking instead of helping.

That probably stems, in part, from their massive population and high population density.  I seem to recall some studies that found people in densely populated cities like NYC are less likely to stop and help a stranger who may be in need (i.e. someone laying on the sidewalk) than in less population-dense regions.

[Soup DeVille]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1AgOqnYYE

Anybody familiar with what a press like that will do to human tissue, or how cheaply automatic loaders/ ejectors  are will get a very good idea how little regard there is for those dudes' lives in that video.

[280Z Turbo]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yL1AgOqnYYE

Anybody familiar with what a press like that will do to human tissue, or how cheaply automatic loaders/ ejectors  are will get a very good idea how little regard there is for those dudes' lives in that video.

A pick and place robot could do that much faster and cheaper. They're just stupid.

[veeman]

Regarding the depravity of running over kids to make sure they're dead... I doubt that's common.  It's a country of one billion people so you should hear 3X sick things there for every one sick thing you hear about over in the U.S., if sickness of mind were equally prevalent between the two countries.  There should be three wackos who hack up preschoolers with axes there for every one wacko who shoots up preschoolers here.  The murder rate and other violent crime rate in the U.S. is higher than it is in China, even if you take in to account them hiding data.  Also here in the U.S., they coddle psychopaths in prison with three meals a day, a bed to sleep on, medical care, etc.  There, they at least execute them... fast. 

Just saying...  I'd hate to live in that corrupt place but... there's sickos everywhere and not anymore in China than anywhere else.   

[GoCougs]

China has a rich history of materialism (i.e., Man as material for the state) dating back many many centuries. Now add to that communism - corrupt police/courts, racial/caste system and social engineering - and you get one awful socio-cultural cocktail. Imagine what this looks like 50 years from now when the male/female ratio is 2:1 and the Chinese "military" (er, domestic police force) has power that rivals that of the US. And that's best case, meaning the ChiComm economy hasn't collapsed (which is a real possibility).

[AutobahnSHO]

That's horrible.

[AutobahnSHO]

The murder rate and other violent crime rate in the U.S. is higher than it is in China, even if you take in to account them hiding data.

I haven't researched but I've read if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, and NY we drop from first to eighth in the world for murder...

[veeman]

I haven't researched but I've read if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, and NY we drop from first to eighth in the world for murder...

We're no way near first.  There's tons of places in Central America, Africa, Middle East that have far higher murder rates.  It's not the number of murders, it's the murder rate; i.e. number of murders per year per 100,000 population.  The New York City rate is actually fairly low.  Beijing is quite a bit lower than NYC however, I doubt the Chinese data is very accurate.

[giant_mtb]

I haven't researched but I've read if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, and NY we drop from first to eighth in the world for murder...

Yeah, no...do some research instead (Googling "world murder rates" isn't all that difficult)...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

U.S. is 111th on the list for muders/100,000.  By pure count, we are 8th, but that's not a horribly relevant statistic.

[MX793]

The US isn't first out of all countries, but does have the highest rate of developed/western/1st-world countries.

[Soup DeVille]

We're no way near first.  There's tons of places in Central America, Africa, Middle East that have far higher murder rates.  It's not the number of murders, it's the murder rate; i.e. number of murders per year per 100,000 population.  The New York City rate is actually fairly low.  Beijing is quite a bit lower than NYC however, I doubt the Chinese data is very accurate.

In 2010, we were 72nd. I believe it was a WHO study.

[12,000 RPM]

I haven't researched but I've read if you exclude Chicago, Detroit, and NY we drop from first to eighth in the world for murder...

Lmao where did you read this, "Paranoid Righty Dispatch"