With the new semester underway, among the private cars parked in front of teaching buildings and dormitories at major universities in Harbin are those belonging to student drivers. Nowadays, it’s no longer surprising to see private cars in ordinary households, and this automotive trend has also begun to flow onto university campuses. For student drivers, a car is just like the pagers, mobile phones, and laptops that were popular in previous years, merely another personal item. But for universities, strengthening the orderly management of student-driven vehicles is a new challenge.
At the start of the semester, reporters visiting multiple universities in Harbin observed that many teaching buildings were filled with parked private cars. At first glance, they seemed to belong to faculty or visitors, but once the class bells rang, many of these vehicles were driven away by students carrying books or wearing backpacks. Xiao Lin, a senior at Harbin Normal University and a member of the student driver group, told reporters that his car was purchased by his family six or seven years ago. Recently, after his parents bought a new car, they estimated the old one would only fetch a few ten thousand yuan on the second-hand market. Since he needed it for his internship at a company and for attending job fairs, they gave it to him. A junior at Northeast Agricultural University told reporters that there are quite a few students driving to school these days, with several cars parked under each teaching building belonging to students, most of whom are day students.
In interviews, reporters found that student drivers usually have two main reasons for driving to school: either their campus is located in a remote area with relatively inconvenient transportation, or they are in the graduation and internship phase, where having a car is genuinely convenient.
Most students around them see no issue with driving to school. Xiao Cao, a senior at Harbin Finance University, told reporters that a car is just a means of transportation, no different from bicycles or motorcycles. As adults, college students are eligible to get a driver’s license, and if they have one and their family can afford it, driving themselves is perfectly reasonable.
However, driving to school brings many safety concerns. Currently, several universities including Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, and Heilongjiang University have implemented management measures such as access cards and document deposits at their gates to regulate vehicles entering campus. Many universities have stated that it’s not possible to restrict students from driving to school, as it depends on individual circumstances, and what schools can do is strengthen the management of student vehicles. For example, Heilongjiang University’s upcoming intelligent management system specifies that only the vehicle owner can collect a Bluetooth access card to enter campus, thereby enhancing the orderly management of student drivers and external vehicles.