Severe Accident at Chinese Festival Begs Questions about Forged Military License Plates

Last weekend marked the Qingming festival (a.k.a. the Tomb Sweeping day), a traditional annual festival in China for people to pay homage to the dead and to taqing, the Chinese way to say “going out and enjoying the greenery of spring“. The quiet festival turned out to be a tragedy for some in Nanyang, Henan Province of China, as an out-of-control truck destroyed five cars, and resulted in eight casualties.

Though there’s not much evidence from these pictures, the truck was tagged by some people in Chinese web forums immediately as being a military lorry. Military license plates have long been considered a privilege in the Middle Kingdom, and have gained a notorious reputation by disobeying traffic regulations such as running red lights and ignoring traffic signs. This is largely because military drivers don’t have to face any form of traffic fine for their misbehavior.

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The advantage to military drivers is so great that earlier this month police in Sichuan Province confiscated 55 fake military license plates, making it pretty clear that someone else wanted to share the advantages of the Chinese Army.

“Some people have been damaging the reputation of the military by avoiding taxes and breaking the laws in recent years,” a local military official told the press. But that won’t help clear up the tragedy that happened at the Qingming festival?

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