Today's local news related.
society.yunnan.cn/html/2010-03/22/content_1113374.htm

I haven't updated this thread since I had no actual news since earlier today.Basically the person who was riding the illegaly owned and operated scooter wants me to compensate him for the days he will not be able to work,his bike and so on.

This is outrageous since it was not me violating any laws to begin with and it seems that his family is trying to blackmail me.I will not give in to their irrational requests,if the police report proves me more liable than him,I will just have my insurance cover the damages and that will be it.

If he and his family continue to blackmail me I will resolve to higher authorities,possibly involve the embassy and whatever else necessary.

Tomorrow morning I have to be at the police station.I will make sure to keep this thread updated.

Thank you all for your support.

If they are threatening you then you should contact the embassy immediately, and have some sort of documentation that you reported it.

I seem to remember from similar topics on TheBeijinger that you should never take responsibility at the scene, never move your vehicle until a police officer orders you to do so, never agree to pay anything before an official settlement is ready or a court orders you to, use up your guanxi if you have any and never even think about visiting the other part at hospital or at his home afterwards since they'll use it against you as you taking responsibility. It's sad but the traffic here is dog-eat-dog and the laws of the road reflect that. What's even more sad is that it's often worth it to "give a gift" to some high ranking policeman to make the report more favourable towards you. In a country with many poor people rest assured that a large percentage of them will try to bleed you dry if they get the opportunity since you are the rich, car wielding foreigner (alledgedly). You need to do everything you can to protect yourself, especially if you didn't do anything wrong.

Yet again I am confirmed in my choice of not owning or operating a car in this country. Btw it's despicable that the security police shows up and leaves immediately since we all know how Chinese people like their fights to be: bloody, 10 vs 1 and they don't stop until you lie worryingly still.

Hi John - any update on your saga?

I'm working on a project regarding traffic issues in China, and would appreciate your input. Please drop me an email for further details - monadic.content@gmail.com.

Hey everyone,long time no post.
I haven't been able to post so far,nothing significant to post anyway.Now it seems that we're just in hold,waiting for the whole matter to go to the court,since that person was asking for compensation that I was not willing to pay for,so we didn't reach an agreement at the police station.

I don't have my vehicle back yet.As I am writing this,I've been informed that me and my wife have to go to the police station again in two days,so if anything comes out of it I will make sure to let the community know.

Regards,John.

Hello everyone,long time no update,but I finally have some news to share.Today I was summoned by the police once more only this time the call was to go get the liability report.

Once I got to the police station (driving my car which I got a few days ago) I looked for the police officer that was handling my case.He was waiting for me with a smile on his face which I took as a good sign,he then started explaining to me what the report says,I could understand much so I asked him with my poor chinese how much liability we have and he said 0,none!A feeling of relief embraced me which was followed by joy.

I wanted all of you to know that I was able to win this,with the support of my wife and her family,we didn't give in to the irrational demands of compensation made by the opposing party and we stood up for our rights and here we stand,justified.

I would like to once more thank everyone for the time you took to leave a comment,an advise or just a few lines of support.

Regards,John.

Glad to hear that everything turned out Ok for you,John. I showed your case to my wife (Chinese) and she told me to have faith in the cops as they would do right by you. Good to see that see was right as I had my doubts when she explained that the bigger vehicle always carries a large percent of the blame even if the other driver/pedestrian was an idiot. Every time I have needed the police for anything,they have treated me very well. It really helps to have a wife who can explain the entire situation to them in chinese. Luckily, I have never needed the courts for anything. Happy May Day!

Thanks DaMiao,I was very glad as well to see that justice prevailed,even though the odds were against me being the driver of a car while involved in an accident with a smaller,more fragile vehicle.

A little late to wish a happy May day to you too and everyone else,but at least I hope you had a good time.

First of all, I'm very sorry to hear what happened to you.

Secondly, since we're on the subject, let me tell you about the much different treatment I got when I got involved in a traffic accident on the rural Thai-Lao border region in Thailand a few years back. A foreign friend of mine and myself (a Thai citizen) were driving my car when we hit a young kid while he was crossing the road (my friend was driving at the time, but I don't think it matters who the actual driver was). Long story short the kid was fine in the end, but we were very nervous during the wait at the hospital to make sure everything was OK.

The villagers were friendly and appreciated our efforts to make sure everything was fine. My insurance company provided them with compensation and we provided them a small amount to help with transport to the nearest hospital in the interim before the family received the money from the insurance company. The family of the boy did not attempt to extort money from us (not that we had much on us anyway, as we'd exhausted most of our funds and were driving back home to get back to work 2 days later), nor did they give us death threats.

I think it was very humble of those people considering the boy could have ended up much worse than he did. I'm assuming that your accident didn't leave the victims very badly injured, and yet they overreacted and tried to threaten you with death? That says something very bad about those people, who can't seem to keep their emotions in tact. They should learn something from my experience. The parents of the kid involved in my incident had to deal with a lot worse than these creeps you had the misfortune of meeting and yet those creeps handled it like superb assholes.

BTW you can rest assured that if one of those creeps tried to kill a foreigner, he'd be put onto the back of a police truck and shot through the back of the head with a single bullet. That's justice Chinese style for macho types who think they can threaten people for something that happened through no fault of your own.

Yes driving in China can be risky, so just take the proper precautions. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of minor accidents here in China where both parties settled the dispute in a civilized manner, so I think you unfortunately hit the wrong people...

I'm glad to hear everything worked out for you in the end....I'm assuming this is the end of this matter?