The SCMP reports that a 12 year old girl is in serious condition – she was riding a bicycle, was in a pedestrian crossing, and was hit by a drunk driver. This happened at 7 AM in Sheung Shui on Wednesday. The motorist, who suffered no injuries, failed a breath test, but was released without being charged and on $5,000 bail.

Apparently this is being seen as the fault of the girl or her mother, because they were crossing against a red light and (it’s hard to tell from the article) the mother may have been riding as a passenger on the bicycle, which is illegal in Hong Kong.

Assuming for the moment that traffic was light, it was 7 AM, and they felt safe in crossing, one thing that should be clear to anyone is that if the driver had not been drinking, his reflexes would have been in good enough shape to avoid a collision. One might also ask (though SCMP reporter Clifford Lo does not) if the mother and daughter thought it was clear to cross, and then got hit by a car, was this drunk driver also speeding?

And one might also ask how successful our government’s public education campaigns are if statistics show that bicycle accidents and drunk driving accidents are both higher so far this year than last year.


In the first three months of this year, three cyclists were killed and 289 injured in 333 accidents. In the same period of last year, 321 cyclists were hurt in 351 accidents but there were no fatalities.

The police figures showed that 45 people were killed in 38 fatal traffic accidents in the first three months of this year. There were 37 people killed in 37 fatal traffic accidents in the same period last year.

Hongkie Town
  • Share/Bookmark