While riders in Eastern Europe complain about traffic participants not having the culture of motorcycles, China considers them illegal and, most important, has bulldozers destroy 14,277 bikes. The event happened late last month in Yungang district, Shenzhen and it is the biggest motorcycle “genocide”, not the first. Part of the city’s “motorcycle ban” campaign, 9532 motorcycles were also vanished this April.

This radical solution is being applied after many breaches involved robbers on motorcycles snatching jewelry and handbags and then making their escapes successfully. Instead of setting up motorcycle police patrols, Shenzhen authorities decided in 2003 to ban motorcycles from riding in downtown areas. Ever since, 580.000 two-wheeled machines were confiscated.

Police claims this as being the only solution for reducing infractions and as a result it lets the numbers talk: robberies have declined by 58.32% compared with last year. So they’ll apparently continue doing this. What, didn’t they thought at exporting the motorcycles?