The Story Behind the Huge Annual Sum of 410 Billion RMB Worth of Traffic Citations on National Highways

• Author: CNTV

Xixia County in Henan province has nearly 5,000 trucks that send coal from Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi to Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and other provinces. These truck drivers have claimed that they have been fined 100-300 RMB a day and up to 3000-8000 RMB a month. Surveys conducted by Wang Jinwu, who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the truck drivers, indicate that 30,000 RMB is the minimum one vehicle should incur in penalties in a year’s time. According to an investigation into the matter by this reporter, fines of 100 RMB and over per day are the most common.

This reporter was allowed to tag along for the ride on one of these trucks, departing from Inner Mongolia en route to Henan. When the truck stopped at a roadside resting area (close to a highway toll booth near the border between the Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi), officers of the Highway Administration immediately fined the driver a fee of 300 RMB per hour, though with the possibility of a discount, if a receipt of fine was not necessary. Trucks taking the Gaoling section of National Highway 210 have discovered that the Highway Administration and the traffic police patrolled areas less than 200 meters apart, yet drivers were fined 100 RMB by the police and only 60 RMB by the Highway Administration. This reporter tagged along with the truck on National Highway 210’s Shaanxi Lantian stretch where traffic police issued citations for exceeding the maximum weight without even making attempts to weigh them.

The majority of fines incurred on highways are due to overloading. However, overloading in trucks is inevitable. The Traffic Regulation Department of Datong, Shanxi conducted an experiment in which a...