Poor safety awareness, unscrupulous violations of traffic rules and lack of road ethics are the major causes of traffic accidents in China, which kill about 100,000 people a year, said legislators in Beijing.

Sun Shujun, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, said that many traffic accidents were caused by dangerous driving, such as speeding, overloading and driving while tired or drunk.

Liu Quanfang, who is attending the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), considered overloaded trucks a major threat to road safety, as they caused more than 30 percent of total traffic accidents.

Trucks were often found to carry cargo weighing two or three times their regulated loading capacity.

Overloading also caused damage to roads, and could even lead to the collapse of highways and bridges in serious cases, Liu said.

Truck drivers sometimes drove day and night, risking their lives to make more money, he added.

According to his research, traffic accidents cause about 600,000 deaths and injuries in China every year, which may impact the lives of about 1.8 million families.

China recorded 349,000 traffic accidents in the first 11 months of last year, with 82,000 deaths, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Sun Shujun also blamed driving schools for loosening the training of new drivers. "These schools care only about money, but do little in legal and ethical education on traffic security. Some even help their students get driver's licenses if they fail the test."

Driver's license applicants in China must attend training courses in driving schools.

These schools usually have a training field designed for various road conditions. Students never drive in real conditions.

Some of the schools are designated by local traffic authorities and can take advantage of the special relation to help students get licenses illegally.
Sun called for better supervision of driver training and testing and the suspension of schools that give poor training.

NPC deputies and CPPCC members also suggested the better use of police and scientific means to monitor and control traffic flow and the improvement of speed-limit warnings and other traffic-calming measures.