Men outnumber women as dangerous drivers
Men were responsible for 95.2 percent of reckless driving cases between 2017 and this year, according to figures released by the Yangpu District procuratorate.
The figures also showed an increasing trend in dangerous driving.
Drunk driving accounted for the lion’s share of cases, while drag racing, passenger overloading and the illegal transport of chemicals were also causes of concern.
Over the period, 461 people were prosecuted for dangerous driving. That had risen from 52 between September 2017 to August 2018 to 243 between September 2019 and August this year.
There were several reasons for this, prosecutor Lin Min told a conference on Tuesday. Lawbreakers had the wishful thinking that they would not be checked by police and the police had strengthened the crackdown on reckless driving.
The majority of lawbreakers were people aged from 25 to 45 without much education, Lin said.
Only eight of the offenders were women.
Most had pleaded guilty and were sentenced to one or two months in jail.
Three people were not the drivers but the owners of cars borrowed by people who had drunk alcohol.
The authority said some people had encouraged the drivers to drink and hadn’t called for a designated driving service; some people forced others who had drunk alcohol to drive; and some had borrowed the cars of others who had taken alcohol.
The authority also found that nonstandard designated driving services had led to several related cases.
Lin said there were many problems during the first and the last “100 meters” of the service.
Some designated drivers asked car owners who had drunk alcohol to drive to nearby main roads to make it easier for them to meet.
Some finished their services at the gate of the car owners’ residential complex and let the owners drive to parking lots in the complex.
The authority has asked companies to make regulations to restrain their designated drivers. The progress of introduction and implementation will be further monitored by the procuratorate, Lin said.
