{"id":3974,"date":"2015-10-04T17:18:35","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3974"},"modified":"2015-10-04T17:18:35","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:18:35","slug":"drivers-in-china-intentionally-kill-the-pedestrians-they-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3974","title":{"rendered":"Drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China\u2019s Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl\u2019s grandmother shouted, \u201cStop! You\u2019ve hit a child!\u201d the BMW\u2019s 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: \u201cDon\u2019t say that I was driving the car,\u201d she said. \u201cSay it was my husband. We can give you money.\u201d
\nIt 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\u2019s fairly common; security cameras<\/a> 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: \u201cIt is better to hit to kill than to hit and injure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caught on security camera<\/p>\n

A 2008 television report features security camera footage<\/a> of a dusty white Passat reversing at high speed and smashing into a 64-year-old grandmother. The Passat\u2019s 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\u2019s body. He then speeds away from her corpse.<\/p>\n

Found not guilty of homicide<\/p>\n

Incredibly, Zhao was found not guilty of intentional homicide. Accepting Zhao\u2019s 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 \u201cnegligence.\u201d Zhao\u2019s case was unusual only in that it was caught on video. As the television anchor noted, \u201cYou can see online an endless stream of stories talking about cases similar to this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDouble-hit cases\u201d have been around for decades. I first heard of the \u201chit-to-kill\u201d 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, \u201cIf I hit someone, I\u2019ll hit him again and make sure he\u2019s dead.\u201d Enjoying my shock, he explained that in Taiwan, if you cripple a man, you pay for the injured person\u2019s care for a lifetime. But if you kill the person, you \u201conly have to pay once, like a burial fee.\u201d He insisted he was serious\u2014and that this was common. (Source: AFP)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A BMW racing through a fruit market in Foshan in China\u2019s Guangdong province knocked down a 2-year-old girl and rolled over her head. As the girl\u2019s grandmother shouted, \u201cStop! You\u2019ve hit a child!\u201d the BMW\u2019s driver paused, then switched into reverse and backed up over the girl. The woman at the wheel drove forward once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}