China has become one of the world’s fastest growing car markets. On a macroeconomic scale, this is due largely to demand rising as Chinese consumers enjoy greater prosperity, coupled with more and more automakers putting an effort into building and selling their products in China.

On a microeconomic scale, though, we think at least a few car sales in the city of Foshan are from people who lost their nerve about using public transportation after spending too long waiting at a bus stop that has a demolished building going down around, and even on top of, it.

One of the side effects of rapid economic development is that often it’s more feasible to tear down an old structure and rebuild it from the ground up than try to retrofit it to the new standards tenants have. Knowing that, it’s not really a surprise to see wrecking crews hard at work leveling a multi-story building behind this bus stop.

 

What’s just a little more shocking is that people are still stepping under the overhang while they wait to catch a ride.

▼ Those two guys look pretty wrapped up in their smartphones, but hey, we’re not going to knock their desire to be distracted them from what’s going on a few feet behind them

 

This doesn’t look to be a rare occurrence at the stop, either, as there are at least as many people standing there at night.

 

There does seem to be some sort of loosely defined barrier directly behind and to the right of the bus stop. That’s small compensation, though, for the way the demolition workers seem to be heaping a pile of crumbling rubble on the left edge of the stop. Of course, even that’s a minor detail compared to the debris and/or scaffolding frames stacked five layers thick above the bus stop, and, more importantly, the would-be passengers’ heads.

 

What makes this even stranger is that it’s obviously not raining in any of these photos, and the daylight shots don’t look like they were taken on a particularly sunny day either. It’s probably human nature to congregate under a covering, all else equal, but we’d argue that the prospect of being buried under a pile of concrete blocks and lumber should count for at least one tic towards the negative on the cost-benefit scale here.

▼ We’re really not sure what benefit these people would be forfeiting if they all took, say, a dozen steps to the side.

 

Source: Toychan