There are nine million accidents in Beijing

Bit of a mis-quote of Katie Melua in the title there.

This story has 100 crashes in Beijing...

 ...and that was just one day last year.

Still nowhere near nine million though.

No for that number of crashes, you would need something immensely stupid.

Like an app.

Like in this ComputerWorld story.

GM in China have produced a (fortunately only prototype) app that lets you scan in someone's licence plate and then send them an SMS message.  The two examples they cite are:

1. a woman who is blocked in by a parked car sending a message to its owner asking to get it shifted
2. a man who fancies a woman in another car so sends her a message telling her so

Hmm.

1. fair enough
2. well dodgy

In reality, most messages sent would be derogatory about driving standards or just downright threatening.

Surely there would have to be some sort of privacy/safety rules that mean your number wouldn't be available to random annoyed people in other cars?

The safety aspects alone are frightening with people driving along pointing their phones at the backs of other cars then sending texts and then receiving texts and reponding to them.

John Du, director of GM's China R&D Division, however, said the main stumbling block in moving from prototype to production is that GM wants apps that are embedded in the car's infotainment system, so an app that exists only on as a smartphone download may never see the light of day.

He thinks THAT is the main problem with this!


Anyway, back to mis-quoting Katie (posing here as the face of one of GM's brands):



"There are nine million accidents in Beijing

That's not a fact,

It's a thing we can deny

Like the fact that I will love you till I die (in an accident in Beijing)."