Car-Free News In Brief

- Ukranian president Victor Yuschenko has disbanded the country's traffic police department because they are too corrupt.

- In the wake of the attacks on the London Underground, cycling trips are up by 50,000 a week.

- If you walk up to a "drive-thru" window [where people can order burgers and coffee without getting out of their cars] at Dunkin' Donuts you will not get served.

- Polish Environment Minister Tomasz Podgajniak called his country's plans for a new motorway network behind the times because the "automotive industry is not so crucial for the development of the economy as it used to be."

- Chrysler is organising street parties (called "Rock the Block") for Chrysler owners only. For US$95 owners can learn cigar rolling and improve their golf swing.

- Denmark's vehicle registration tax is EUR16,000, the highest in Europe.

- The Indian state of Gujarat, writes the Institute for Transportatation and Development Policy, is promoting bike lanes in the capital, Ahmedabad.

- David Piper, the new head of General Motors Powertrain Europe, was hit and killed by a car, a day before he was scheduled to assume his new duties. He was riding his bicycle.

CHINA'S RAGE: THE BICYCLE VERSUS THE AUTOMOBILE
[submitted by Daniel Lerch and edited from "The Washington Post" report]

A minor traffic incident on a Sunday afternoon in Chizhou, China sparked a riot that evolved over eight chaotic hours into an "expression of rage against the Chinese Communist Party's new fascination with businessmen, profits and economic growth," reports the Washington Post. The following is the Post's account of what happened:

Liu Liang, a computer student, was pedaling his bicycle by the downtown vegetable market. Driving down the same street was Wu Junxing, deputy manager of a hospital. Liu's bicycle and Wu's sedan collided, sending Liu crashing to the ground. Almost immediately, witnesses said, Liu, 22, and Wu, 34, began arguing over who was at fault. In the heat of the dispute, they said, Liu damaged one of Wu's side-view mirrors, prompting Wu's bodyguards to beat the young man, leaving him bleeding from his mouth and ears.

After they saw what happened to Liu, Chizhou's self-described "common people" rose up against what they saw as their local government's willingness to side with rich outside investors [Wu was not from the area] against Chizhou's own. By the end of the evening, 10,000 Chizhou residents had filled the streets.

"When anger boils up in your heart so long, it has to burst," said a Chizhou man who was part of the crowd that night.

By 5 pm, the mob turned its attention to Wu's sedan, overturning it, pummeling it with rocks and then setting it afire with cigarette lighters, the witnesses said. Two police cars suffered the same fate an hour later, they added, and the police van was also trashed and set ablaze.

The crowd cheered and shouted at the sight of government vehicles burning.

Before calm returned to the streets, the disturbance had become a political rebellion against the increasingly intimate connection in modern China between big money and the Communist government.