They've aggressively implemented traffic cameras recently.

So traffic behavior has changed dramatically. People actuallywear seatbelts now! This is because they fine if you get caught even without a belt.

Some lights have cameras, not all, many drives know the ones that do and don't. Also, the black Audis don't care if they get caught on camera, they are basically immune to punishment. I see a few WTFs a day, still.

I wish abiut the seatbelts. Almost every single taxi I've been in for the last few years has them hidden under the back seat where they aren't usable. We have to take a zhuan Che just to get them for ourselves, and the the driver is never wearing. Any kind of enforcement in Beijing has a short attention span, they might do seatbelts once a year at a few locations, it isn't enough to form any kind of deterrent.

What are those black audis you're talking about? Government cars?

Beijing is a government city, so lots of national and provincial officials floating around, their car of choice seems to be a black Audi, but they seem to be branching out into BMWs, Mercedes, and even land rovers. You can tell who they are by how many traffic rules they ignore, but the police typically don't bother enforcing anything on anyone unless they are in special campaign mode.

Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou are better. Heck, even Kunming and hangzhou are better than Beijing, given there aren't so many officials in these cities.

Diplomatic plates are a similar hazard in NYC or DC.

Literal immunity in most cases, attitude on top of that.

Diplomat black plates are rare though, and they don't seem to drive aggressively, even if they have diplomatic immunity. Saw Hilary's SUV once around the American embassy, weird that they didn't bother blocking traffic or anything.

My families are locals and they know the government plate prefixes and say government member cars are all low key, usually Chinese brands.

That was the plan, but you'll still see a lot of audis in front of the ministries.

When I was in Beijing, every bus I travelled in (OK, that was 3 or 4 of them, so anecdotal evidence) had seatbelts installed in a position such that they where physically unusable.

I find it a rather funny thing, why do they do that? I mean, if they are required to install seatbelts and they actually buy and install them, doesn't it cost the same to place them, you know, in their proper place?

No one uses seatbelts, so no one cares, so they just bury them to make it easier to put on the seat cover that isn't really designed for seatbelts with only nominal holes for show.

You're refuting points that I didn't actually make!

On (a), I said cars obey traffic lights. I didn't say they don't do other crazy things.

On (d), I said people look when they're crossing the road. I wasn't talking about cyclists going through an intersection. That's not what 'crossing the road' means in every day speech.

On (c), I was talking about creating an additional lane. I wasn't talking about illegally blocking an existing lane.

I see cars routinely not obey traffic lights, which is one of hose crazy things. The only reason it has gone down at all is because of the cameras, but you'll still see it happen on a daily basis.

People don't look when they are crossing, they just go. I have to warn the driver to be careful at such intersection because there is always some old guy or gal crossing. The bikes are much more dangerous, as the cars are expected to, and can, just go around the pedestrians who don't give a f*ck about the light, but the bikes are always surprises.

Beijing used to have lots of bike lanes. Technically it still does, but it is all being used for parking. The four lane roads on either side of my apartment are effectively one lane roads since parking enforcement is non existent.

Are black Audis intimidating to police for some reason or am I missing something?

China is a corrupt country where officials will use/abuse their positionsagainst police who pick trouble with them. Black Audi is the stereotypical official car of choice.

I wonder how many people that are not in government specifically buy black Audis in that city to take advantage of this. It's actually possible (although unlikely) that much of the bad behavior is from pretenders.

Thanks for providing some color. I found this article with some more background: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/fashion/in-china-audi-mean...

I think Black Audi means nothing these days. I would partially agree with your first sentience if it's 10 years ago and in small city. But today in big cities, definitely no.

Publicly? That's not a good sign.