Read More
An accident involving a private car from mainland China and a tour bus outside the Disney's Hollywood Hotel on Lantau Island left one driver injured this morning, marking the second notable collision linked to the "Southbound Travel for Guangdong Vehicles" scheme since its launch.
ADVERTISEMENT
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
The incident occurred around 10am today along Sea Point Road.
A tour bus was traveling down the road when it collided with a mainland private car carrying an "FT" registration plate, assigned under the cross-border driving initiative.
The momentum of the collision sent the private car crashing directly into a nearby lamp post before it finally came to a halt.
While the driver of the mainland private car escaped unscathed, the tour bus driver suffered neck injuries and found himself trapped inside his cabin, unable to open the door.
Firefighters were deployed to the scene to rescue the driver, who was successfully extricated and subsequently taken to hospital via ambulance for medical treatment.
The collision highlights ongoing discussions surrounding the "Southbound Travel for Guangdong Vehicles" scheme, which officially rolled out last December.
Designed to boost tourism, the program initially offered a daily quota of 100 vehicles from Guangdong province, allowing visitors to stay in Hong Kong for a maximum of three days.
Travel data indicates that approximately 90 percent of these travelers spend one to two days in the city.
The first phase opened access to drivers from Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, and Zhongshan, before expanding six months later to include affluent cities such as Foshan and Dongguan.
Vehicles participating in the scheme are assigned distinctive license plates beginning with the letters "FT" followed by numbers, which remain tied to the same vehicle for all future visits.
As the initiative grows, local road safety has drawn increased scrutiny. By the end of April 2026, the Transport Department had issued roughly 7,000 electronic permits under the scheme, recording more than 5,000 cross-border trips.
Today's crash is not the first time an "FT" plated vehicle has been involved in a local traffic accident.
On January 5, just two weeks after the scheme was introduced, a similar collision took place on the Stonecutters Bridge near the West Kowloon Highway exit, where a tour bus collided with a white Tesla electric car operating under the southbound program, though no injuries were reported in that earlier event.
