This is my first post here, but it is really a shame that it has to be an unpleasant topic. If you guys don't mind reading something ugly please go on.

For over half a year I have been living in Kunming being an English teacher, and am driving me and my wife around(legally) on a daily basis.

Last friday I had my first car accident in China, which was literally as freaky as it can ever get. About 10pm we had wife's co-worker with us, and were coming back home near the New Asia Athletic City neighborhood(near the new Luosiwan). We just started moving after the signal turned green at the junction of Caiyun North Rd. and Guan Xiao Rd.

For one second there was nothing in front of us, the next second a scooter came from the right side of the crossroad having no light on, going on a crazy speed. It was too late for me to hit the break because the car already hit that guy and sent his scooter few meters away. We stopped the car and that guy was sitting on the road, accompanied by a friend of his riding a different scooter. I went to check on him, but they were both very hostile and I cannot speak much Chinese. I decided to go to my wife and her co-worker by the side of the road while my wife called 110.

While we were waiting, something unexpected happened. Suddenly about a dozen men showed up from nowhere coming toward us screaming and yelling at my wife and her co-worker. So I went over with my broken chinese to tell them to "deng yi xia", then they suddenly came toward me looking for troubles. My wife and her co-worker tried to go in front of me and they got shoved around pretty bad by these guys, and out of fear wife told me to run, I saw a punch coming which I avoided, they started pushing me so I backed off to the other side of the road trying to get them away from the girls. I knew that if I stayed there would be a really bad fight and wife would try to protect and get hurt, so I started running while 3 or 4 men were trying to catch up, but luckily I have been very athletic my whole life so I was able to leave them far behind. When they gave up running I used my cell phone to call my wife immediately to see if she was ok. She told me they were only being verbal toward her and that I shouldn't go back until the police arrives.

I don't know how much time has passed until she called me again, telling me that the police was there. So I started going back to the site carefully, and I saw my wife, her co-worker and her mother along the traffic police. The police started investigating the site. Those guys were trying to come close to me again and immediately the traffic police told them to stay away. In the end, our car got taken along with that guy's scooter by the police, until the case is settled.

It turned out next day, that this guy's scooter had no license and he had no id card either. These people are said to be from "A La village" of Guangdu district. They were still making death threats in front of the police repeatedly telling me that even if I am a foreigner they can still kill me and do whatever they want.

Sadly that night while those people were trying to "chop me into pieces" according to what my wife translated me what they said. Neighborhood police arrived and they left in a snap saying that this is traffic accident, it has nothing to do with them despite my wife begging them to stay to protect me from being hurt.

We are going to the 8th traffic police squadron on Monday to see what the police will do to settle this. But I think it is very unlikely that it will end nicely since the guy's father kept threatening to sue us for huge amoung of money for compensation.

My name is John Lappas and I am an English teacher in Kunming Professional College of Art. What I told you guys here have been completely true. I just starte driving when the traffic light turned green while someone violating the signal ran into my car on a high speed, then he brought his whole village trying to hurt us. I have someone who witnessed the whole thing. This has been the most ridiculous treatment in my whole life and I'm not sure if I would tell anyone to come to Kunming anymore, despite the fact how I liked it before.

Sorry to hear about your terrible experience, however sad to say, things like this happens all the time.

I sounds a little suspicious that a gang of their friends happens to come out of nowhere in an area that's not very populated. I would venture to guess that you were setup in a shakedown by these thugs. It wouldn't surprise me if these people are part of a crime ring out looking for unsuspecting victims in order to extract compensation for the staged accident.

It is a most unfortunate situation to be in. I would probably expect them to continue their hostile and threatening language for some time to soften you up for the invariably offer to settle for an outrageous amount of money.

However the law maybe on your side, there is a bias toward automobile drivers, especially drivers of import cars. The traffic police will probably do little to come to your aid and in fact pressure you to settle with the "victim". The best you can hope for is that they will be "fair" when they mediate by talking down the asking price to something not so outrageous.

If you are willing to fight for your rights and buck the system, you might be able to get your day in court but there is no guarantee the courts will be fair either. If you want to go this route than you want to hire an lawyer with some connections to the judges.

Pride aside, the pragmatic course would be probably feign poverty and drive a hard settlement bargain with the thugs.

Again, I'm really sorry you had to experience this.

I am sorry to hear what happened as well. I've heard a lot about gangs and mafia, etc here in Kunming. It is an amazing city and I hope that someday soon all these gangs will not be allowed to do the things they do. I know the new mayor is trying to deal with these issues and hopefully things will get better. Anyways keep your head up and I wish you the best through all of this.

John
Agree with Tonyaod - sounds like a shakedown.

Please report this incident to the foreign affairs office at your school - I'm assuming you're a registered foreign expert. Traffic police are traffic police - not public security. If you want public security - you have to nag the traffic police to escalate the matter and have a ranked public security officer come to the scene. Just keep telling him you want to speak to a supervisor - and keep moving up the chain until you get someone from the "office" with a car. Ranked officers will arrive in a car.

As death threats were made and you are a foreigner - this is akin to terrorism. Kunming is a bit far from Beijing, so the unskilled or unemployed labor can only resort to threats of violence as they don't know how to argue their case legally - however trying to assault you is also not acceptable under chinese law. The police will try to settle the matter as amicably as possible - but death threats are intolerable - so file a police report on the matter (if you can). And again - remember traffic police are ONLY traffic police.

As for unlicensed driver - electric scooters seem to fall under the bicycle category. As the kid hit your vehicle - it should be an insurance matter - let your insurance company handle it, if possible. If the vehicle was powered - then the kid has a problem - powered vehicles require licenses.

So I encourage you to alert the university officials (each university has a party secretary) that you are receiving death threats (make sure you have some kind of police report if possible) and let the government hammer this matter into obscurity for you. That's what they're there for. If an official tries to tell you this is a cultural issue - then they should equally "educate" the other party that making death threats is unacceptable public behavior.

If the thugs visit your house, stalk you or your family in any way - call the police and nag until you get a high ranking officer (usually carries a gun or has a neater and fiercer demeanor along with more bright flashy things on his shoulders and always arrives in a police car). You will have to accompany the officer to police headquarters (make sure you have the traffic police ID numbers as they are witnesses along with your wife) to file the report. Also contact your university's foreign experts office.

Finally - if you have the bucks - ask the university to recommend an attorney. Never be a victim - thugs should be squashed like bugs as we are all working to create a sustainable harmonious society.

John, I was in an accident recently albeit not as crazy as your incident, however as a result I've come to learn a fair bit about the law regarding these situations.

Mine was a lot simpler, a scooter hit the back of my car whilst I was turning right. Despite it hitting the back of my car it was deemed to be 70% my fault - merely because I am a car and he is a scooter and I was turning. Unfortunately I don't think Tonyaod is right when he says that car drivers are protected over scooter drivers - this seems to certainly not be the case as the stance is taken that cars are 'flesh wrapped in metal' and scooters are 'metal wrapped in flesh' and so everything is done to protect the scooters/bikes/peds.

In my incident, the only reason that they assumed 30% of the blame was because they had an illegal passenger on the back. Unfortunately she fell off and broke her arm and despite her being an illegal passenger we are still liable for our 70% of her hospital costs which stacked up to 4 WAN by the end.

What I'm saying is that unfortunately it seems that the illegality of the others actions seem immaterial, and as a car you are likely to be deemed more liable. On the scene the police should have given you a police report - they have to do this. In it it should lay out the situation of the accident and apportion blame as they deem appropriate. (As in my case 70-30).

This blame division has been critical for me as the 30% they were liable for stopped them taking the piss at the hospital and getting every last thing checked. For you it sounds like no injury occurred - did they go to hospital immediately after the accident? If not then officially no injury took place and you are not liable for anything.

My incident is still being sorted, 1 year on, reasonably amicably, although I too received death threats and injury threats from them afterwards. Your situation sounds a lot more set-up than mine, and the intimidation sounds a lot more organised. In my case it was more emotional intimidation so we could more easily ignore it.

From my experience if you have a police report, and even if the report says you were 100% responsible, you should only be liable for repairs to their scooter/your car which your insurance company will cover. If there was injury it gets more complicated, but your insurance will still cover it. DO NOT GIVE ANY OTHER MONEY AT ALL to these people. Various sums were demanded from us but we refused and in the end there is not much they can do. We are paying back via our insurance everything we legally have to and its all agreed between us and the injured, although ridiculously it is still going to court as the driver is refusing to pay his share to the injured passenger.

As for the death threats, its horrible and very unpleasant, but I would be very surprised if they weren't hollow. Its horrible when things like this happen, but you should try not to let it affect your feelings about kunming as a whole - these things happen everywhere in the world. One of the biggest things I love about Kunming is how much safer it feels than the west, but I can understand that incidents like this can shake that feeling somewhat.

If you want any more details about how our situation was resolved hit me back. It might be useful for you as a case study.

Just to clarify something lil_farmer brought up. I had said,

"However the law maybe on your side, there is a bias toward automobile drivers, especially drivers of import cars."

I was implying what lil_farmer had actually experienced, the perception is that automobile drivers are wealth, at the very least, middle-class and that scooter/biker riders are peasants. Therefore, an accident involve both parties are view as an power struggle between the rich and the poor.

I didn't meant that drivers get any preferential treatment, in fact, I meant the opposite.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in my original posting.

I want to thank everyone who took the time to read the thread and left the thoughts, I am really glad to find out that so many people actually care!

It's good to know that other foreigners had similar experience while in Kunming; it helps me plan my next step on how to handle this better.

The person who was riding the scooter did go to the hospital. My wife's mother accompanied him via ambulance and we paid for the checkup until the insurance company will reinburse us. His injuries are mostly bruises and a cracked nose. The traffic police told us not to pay for everything, and during the weekend whatever cost there could incur is paid by that guy's father. Funny thing is, despite the fact that the whole time those people were jumping around, none of them called for 120, we did.

Also, that person's scooter is proven to be gas powered,not electric. His father was mumbling that its license got washed away and bull like that while the police asked.

Laotou, thanks a lot for your advice. I am a registered foreign expert and my dept. chair is already informed. I will go to the local police dept. to file a report for the death threats. I guess I didn't describe it quite clearly previously, we did call for both traffic police and public security. The latter came and saw it being an accident scene and left right away, despite that we were surrounded and pushed around.

Lastly, lil_farmer, thank you for your offer, it is sad to see that you had to deal with those people for so long. The impression I had about the city is indeed somewhat affected but I will try not to judge Kunming according to one terrible accident, I just feel like this is way too common here and maybe one day it will not happen so frequently?

Thanks again for all your advices. On monday we are going to the traffic police again to get the liability report, I am hoping that it wouldn't be too ridiculous since I was not violating the traffic law. Whatever the result is I will let you guys know.

It is unfortunate that this type of incident happens, but it is unlikely to change anytime soon. Due to the government attempting to reduce strain on the judicial system these laws are setup to be as situation independent as possible. This in turn means the laws are oversimplified, so that each law covers as broad a section of accidents as possible. If a car and a bike collide it is the majority of the responsibility is by law applied to the driver of the car. The previously mentioned 70% is the minimum for driver responsibility. This has been taken to the extreme where the families of suicide jumpers have received compensation from the drivers who unavoidably killed them.

On another note it is just as much a crime that you are an English teacher. Your grasp of the English language is as appalling as the application of the law in China.

Bit of an unecessary comment at the end there.

Anyway, back to the subject. Sorry Tonyaod for misunderstanding your comment - we have all acknowledged that the driver of the car is in the weakest position.

To John I would say that if the injuries were minor and the insurance will cover most of it, then you are best off trying to forget about the injustice of the other party's illegal actions. I campaigned for a long time about the injustice of me having to fork out tens of thousands for someone's illegal actions - we don't have handrails on our stairs at home, if a thief broke in and fell down the stairs would I be liable? According to this law I would.

Anyway, the only route you would have if you wanted to overturn the decision is to challenge the traffic police' decision. This would probably cost you more than the incidient in the first place.

It sounds like the injuries weren't bad, in which case you should just let it play out and let insurance cover it. Your main worry is the death threats, but again, they are very much likely to be hollow and for intimidaiton purposes to try and get you to offer some kind of compensation.

Hi lil_farmer, no need to apologize, I didn't mean to nit-pick.

Normally, it wouldn't have been worth clarifying but given the severity of what hongxiongmao is facing, I didn't want to give contradicting information.

Anyway, hope you had a great weekend!