What happens when crossing the crazy streets of #Shanghai. In this 50sec video I attempt to illustrate how hectic and potentially dangerous it can be to cross the busy streets of Shanghai, even when the green light is on for Pedestrians. While crossing the street, I had 3 interruptions until I reached the other side, which is completely normal here - cars don’t tend to stop when lights are green for pedestrians. The 3rd interruption was a man on a motorbike, who almost ran me over as you can see in the video, he passed so close to me when I was already mid way through crossing the street.

On a similar note, I saw two people being run over by scooters today, while they were crossing the street on a green light for Pedestrians. Neither of the two scooters stopped to help them after the hit, it was quite a sad and shocking thing to observe. The pedestrians didn’t suffer any serious injuries, but they did remain on the floor for a little while until they managed to get up again. This seems to be a common occurrence in the streets of Shanghai, which unfortunately reminds me to take even more precaution when crossing any street in the world from now on. 

These huge culture differences from European countries like Sweden for example, where cars often let pedestrians cross the street when the lights are red for them, is very interesting, as differences are so vast between human attitudes. It reassures me to think we are fortunate to have the minimal respect for pedestrians in some European countries, where this is not an everyday scene.