This is a 2015 Reuters photo of traffic in Beijing

This article is more than one year old.
Published on January 23, 2020 at 10:00
Updated on September 18, 2024 at 16:53
2 min read
By AFP India

An image has been shared hundreds of times in Facebook posts that claim that it shows a massive traffic jam in southern India after a regional harvest festival. The claim is false; the photo was actually taken in 2015 by the Reuters news agency and shows a giant tailback on an expressway in Beijing, China.

The photo was published here on Facebook on January 21, 2020.

The post’s caption in regional Tamil language translates to English as: “There is no other country like ours, from Trichy & Samayapuram people returning to Chennai after Pongal.”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Trichy, also know as Tiruchirappalli, Samayapuram and Chennai are three different cities in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated in Tamil Nadu.

The claim is false; a reverse image search found that the photo was actually taken by Reuters and shows a traffic jam in China on October 6, 2015.

A similar photo was published here in a Reuters report on traffic safety. Below is a screenshot of the Reuters photo:

The photo’s caption reads: “Vehicles are seen stuck in a traffic jam near a toll station as people return home at the end of a week-long national day holiday, in Beijing, China, October 6, 2015. Picture taken October 6, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily.”

A subsequent search led to the same photo used in the false post published in an article by the Evening Standard on October 8, 2015 (archived link). The photo is also credited to Reuters.

People’s Daily, a Chinese state newspaper, shared another image of the same traffic jam on their official Twitter account here on October 6, 2015.

【空中拍攝中國黃金週“回潮”遊客】一下交通堵塞的情況為2015年10月6號空中拍攝的北京﹣香港﹣澳門特快通道的景象。在10月1開始的國慶黃金週即將結束之際，家家戶戶都已準備結束出行向家中歸趕。交通管制部門數據顯示有7.5億人口流動。 pic.twitter.com/CbgpDlzNZX
— 人民日報 People's Daily (@PDChinese) October 6, 2015

The Chinese language tweet translates to English as: “[Aerial shooting of Chinese Golden Week ‘homebound’ tourists] The traffic jam situation below is the aerial scene for the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway on October 6, 2015. As the National Day Golden Week, which began on October 1, is about to end, families are ready to end their trips and return home. Data from the traffic control department shows that 750 million people are on the move.”

The same traffic jam was also reported by several media outlets, for example here, here, here and here.

Google Maps shows the location of the Beijing toll booth here. Below is a screenshot of the Google Maps image:

EDIT: This story was corrected to clarify the photo in the Reuters report is not the same as the image shared in the false post.

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