Too harsh a blow for breaking traffic rules

The life of Lu Qin, a young woman involved in an unsavory traffic incident in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, has been hell over the past week.

Her predicament started with a thrashing she received from a male driver, surnamed Zhang, for changing lanes dangerously while driving on an expressway. Video clips of the incident went viral online after being uploaded on the Internet and then aired by a local TV station.

While the brutality of Zhang sparked a public outcry, another video filmed by his dashboard camera changed public opinion, at least on the Internet. The second video shows Zhang being forced to pull the brakes several times because Lu kept changing lanes even though she could cause a major accident. At one point, Zhang narrowly missed hitting a cyclist. Zhang, who is now in custody, told police that he was outraged because Lu posed a threat to the safety of his one-year-old son in the car.