Kids in Cars, China Style

So, I'm walking down the street with my hippest Chinese friend, someone I've known and worked with for about ten years. He's recently come back from a year of study in the US, where he's a doctoral candidate in the same field I'm in. We're talkng about a research project we'd like to work on together, and we're mulling over which university to approach with the plan, when a car backs up and almost runs us over. It's going rather slowly and we're able to jump out of the way, but considering the week I had (getting kicked out of the Friendship Store, falling into a Chinese toilet and almost breaking my leg or worse, losing a shoe,  getting sideswiped while in a taxi) I'm not taking any chances and jump back unnecessarily far, up onto a high concrete curb that acts as a traffic barrier. This catches the driver's attention and he actually STOPS the car to laugh at me. This is when I realize two things: first, he's smoking. The windows are rolled up to catch every particle of smoke, and second, there's a woman and BABY in the front seat next to him and the baby is simply sitting in the woman's lap, a la Britney, inhaling all that smoke and bumping its little forehead against the dash. I don't think there are any laws here about restraining children in cars--I often see cars with masses of little ones hanging out the window, drinking out of glass bottles and sucking on stick lollipops--and I remember the wonderful freedom from restraint I had as a child, when all of us simply piled into a car and took off. I also remember working as a student nurse in a hospital and dealing with the parents who lost their kids that way, processing the insurance paperwork for children now gone vegetable due to head trauma. I'd happily take stuffing myself into a restraint over death by auto any day. My friend--hip as he is---didn't understand why I was upset. "Don't worry, you've lost a LOT of weight," he counseled. "This time next year no one will make fun of you!" I said, "Xiao Wang, it's not the fact this jerk is sneering at me for jumping on a traffic barricade to keep from being crushed by his damn bad driving, but the fact he's sneering at me while giving his kid head trauma and cancer." Xiao Wang looked at me with great pity and said kindly, "You still don't get it. Over here, if you can afford a car, you are invincible."