Jiangxi Probes Toll Worker Who Pulled a Chainsaw on a Motorcycle Rider
A video of a toll worker stopping a motorcycle rider with a power saw — and unscrewing the rider's camera — drew more than 12,000 likes in a day; police and other departments are now jointly investigating the incident at a Jiangxi expressway booth.
The video closing out China's Golden Week travel coverage runs under half a minute: at a toll station on an expressway in Ningdu county, Jiangxi, a worker in a high-visibility vest stops a motorcycle rider — power saw in hand, at one point resting it on a windscreen while shouting "Call the traffic police! Charge through?" — and then, as the argument escalates, unscrews the camera mounted on the motorcycle. Posted on October 5, as holiday-return traffic peaked, it drew more than 12,000 likes within a day.
The response was quick. Highway police told the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald the same evening that they were looking into the clip, and by Tuesday the machinery had moved further: public security and other departments are jointly investigating, the paper reported. The station's parent organization — the Ji'an East management center of Jiangxi Provincial Transportation Investment Group — supplied the frame the investigation will test: motorcycles are barred from Jiangxi's expressways, so toll staff are required to help traffic police turn riders back, and the worker involved "had been trimming trees by the roadside and, in his haste, behaved improperly." No decision has been announced.
The comments did not line up neatly behind the rider. "A chainsaw that isn't running is no different from a stick," one widely shared rebuttal began. "The motorcycle was on an expressway it isn't allowed on, approaching a toll booth at speed — was it trying to charge the gate? I'd check the rider first."
The boundary the confrontation crossed is one Chinese road users know well. Province by province, China bars motorcycles from its expressways — Jiangxi among them — leaving riders to national and provincial roads while toll staff, who are not police, handle day-to-day lane control. Most such encounters end with a turned-back rider; what made this one national was the saw, and then the camera. In an era when riders film everything, the worker's decision to unscrew the rider's action camera read to much of the audience as destroying the evidence — and the footage, of course, had already been saved.
The center says it is still handling the case; police say results will be published through official channels. Whatever the ruling, the center's own account — a tree-trimming tool, an overeager employee — will now be weighed against the video itself, which by Tuesday had collected more than 1,600 comments and a multi-department investigation.