May 14, 2001, 11:01pm

Today's rant is gonna be a bit (okay a lot) UN politically correct, but I don't care about that much. But before I get into that, If you're interested in getting one of those way cool Mini-Z cars I've been talking about, Great Hobbies, in Prince Edward Island, has the Skyline model (in silver body paint) for $200 Cdn. That's about $125 US greenbacks, about $30-$40 USD cheaper than anywhere else. It is by far the cheapest price in Canada. If you want one, you have to phone in your order 1-800-839-3262, mention you saw it in their flyer, and quote number KYO3091S. No, I don't make a dime from this recommendation :-).

Okay, PC time. Or lack thereof.

I've driven in many of the great (and not so great) cities of North America and Europe. Some cities stand out for having unique drivers - Parisiens are so impatient and callous that they'll drive 3 cars abreast down a 1 lane road (hence the concrete pilons they have on most sidewalk edges in that city). Montrealers seem to think they are all Gilles Villeneuve. But no city compares to Vancouver, and especially Richmond, for the massive amounts of just plain bad drivers. And I blame it on the Chinese.

Woah, slow down. This isn't a racist thing. This is a cultural transmorphing thing. Hong Kong immigrants are rapidly becoming the majority of the population in Richmond BC. The driving problem stems from two things. First, (and this is a proven cultural fact), most HK residents tend to live in a bubble because of the overcrowded city. The residents tend to blank out things happening around them just to maintain their sanity. This goes for most overcrowded societies, something that is well documented in anthropology. The mind creates a personal inner space where an invisible barrier shuts out most things going on around the person, except for things that present immediate crisis or danger.

The second thing about the HK people is that car ownership, and driving a car every day is not a normal thing in that small city. Because of the overpopulation, many HK residents never drive cars, and rely on public transportation.

When the mass exodus to N. America occurred prior to the 1996 repatriation of HK to China, a lot of the immigrants came over flush with cash from the sale of their million dollar properties (real estate in HK is through the roof). Cash allowed them to buy huge houses and also buy cars for every member of their families - two luxuries that they never thought possible before. And because of this, many extremely inexperienced drivers hit the road, especially in Richmond, where many of the immigrants settled. And passing the drivers' license was hard, but there were ways around this - in 1995, the Richmond BC Driver's Bureau was busted for accepting bribes for licenses. So many bribed licenses were issued by the bureau that some estimates put it as high as 20% or more of the licensed drivers during 1991 and 1995 were driving without qualifications to do so. And the scam was run by Asian sources.

So what do we have today? We have the result of all the above - many drivers who literally think they are the only cars on the road, and many of them drive badly to boot. I can't tell you how many times I've seen situations where cars will cut across 3 lanes of traffic right at an interesection to make a left hand turn. Worse yet, I've seen cars literally stall a lane of traffic in order to jump across those three lanes to make a left hand turn, as they sit at the intersection. Almost everyday I see at least a dozen bonehead driving mistakes, including lane drifting, driving at 15Kph on a 60kph road while looking at businesses (window shopping from the car), double, triple parkers, and the thing that amazes me most - people who will sit for 5, 10 minutes in their car blocking a lane in a parking lot, just so they can park 3 slots closer to a store. Not a week goes by where I don't have to rely on my own Young Drivers of Canada defensive driving course (taken 15 years ago) to avoid an accident that is caused by another driver simply not paying attention to what they are doing. It's absolutely amazing that I haven't had the car dinged yet (knock on wood).

One thing I want to make clear. I'm not singling out the HK immigrants here as the only bad drivers in Richmond. Plenty of bad gweillo (white barbarian, what the HK immigrants call us whiteys) drivers too. But the influx of "livin' in the bubble, never drove before, now I got a Lexus" HK immigrants, tied in with the influx of riceboy cars (usually honda civics spruced up with oversized exhausts and giant spoilers) driven by the kids (thanks pops!) has made this officially, in my mind at least, the worst driver capital of the western world.

And yeah, call this un-pc, call it racist, but you'd be wrong. It is a fact. Come and drive here sometime. Leave your car parked in the main mall here, and its a 50.50 chance you won't get a ding by the time you leave it.

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Mixelania

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