I am so notorious at work for enjoying long-distance drives - usually speeding - to my home province in the south for a vacation that colleagues will often ask me if I "have driven somewhere lately?" In the past - I mean five or six years ago - I would reply with a cheerful "yes" followed by an enthusiastic description of how great it felt to drive on the newly built expressways. Nowadays my answer is usually a negative "seldom" followed by an explanation of how horrible it felt to drive in the stream of overloaded trucks.

China has built many expressways in recent years. The quality of the roads and infrastructure is so good that they can beat any of their counterparts in the United States, Germany and Australia, where I've had the experience of driving a car. But the road management in this country is a far cry from the oversight in Western developed countries. Though road authorities have made efforts to regulate traffic on highways and expressways, fatal accidents occur frequently, usually involving heavy-duty trucks in most cases.

With the national economy growing at a fast clip, China's roads are increasingly crowded with trucks carrying all kinds of goods. Though this is certainly a welcome scene, the juggernauts have become more and more a threat to other motorists as well as to themselves. Heavy loads, long durations of driving with fatigue, reckless driving and poor maintenance of safety equipment are the most frequently found problems with truck drivers. Their regulation certainly depends more on the road authorities' supervision than on their own conscience.