Someone who doesn’t see a thing.
A cocky guy with a “look how cool I am” attitude runs over and kills a child who was playing on the street.
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The Chinese criminal charge that can carry the death penalty for “showing off” while driving.
In China, fatal accidents resulting from reckless “show-off” driving—like the one in question—are not charged under the “crime of causing a traffic accident” (which is based on negligence); instead, if the act is deemed intentional and poses a high risk to public safety, Article 115 of the Criminal Law—the “crime of endangering public safety by dangerous means”—is applied, potentially carrying the death penalty. For instance, in August 2021, an individual surnamed Yan in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region caused the deaths of four people while speeding under the influence of drugs; he was sentenced to death in both the first and second trials, and the Supreme People’s Court upheld the death sentence in January 2025. Sentencing is not determined solely by the scale of the casualties; there is a precedent (involving an individual surnamed Fu) where the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People’s Court handed down a death sentence—approved by the Supreme People’s Court in July 2018—for an incident that resulted in one death and two serious injuries.
Meanwhile, across China, 255,000 road traffic accidents occurred in 2023, resulting in over 60,000 fatalities; the mortality rate stands at approximately 17 per 100,000 people, a figure slightly higher than the global average (approximately 15 per 100,000, according to 2021 WHO statistics).
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