TW govt to get tougher on drunk driving

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

youtube.com/watch?v=hY7yyoeU … ontext-gfa

Over 400 deaths a year caused by drunk drivers, the TW govt is planning to increase penalties for drunk driving.

Breath analyser 0.55 or blood alchohol content 0.11 pct and above to get 2 years max sentence if caught driving/riding.

Those who cause a death are to receive between 3 years to 10 year sentence.

Those who cause serious injury to receive between 1 year to 7 year sentences.

Public opinion is that these new sentences are still too light.

Some suggest the death penalty or life in prison.

2

Its a bit of nonsense that they allow driving with alcohol at all as the amount that is “allowed” to be consumed here is so low that you are almost certainly over the limit if you had more than one small beer.

And as the police report may say “consumed alcohol” (no matter the amount) in case of an accident the best way to cope with it is not to drive at all if you had alcoholic drinks.

Seriously taxis are dead cheap here. No need to end up like Khalid .
Obviously they portray him or a foreigner in those animations of the Youtube clip.

3

Again … they get tougher every year with zero results … :eh:

Instead of targeted controlled checkpoints they should send more cops on the street and do random checks stopping cars and trucks … also they should do more checks generally … and fine people!

It appears that Taiwan has a desk jockey police force instead of an active patrolling/controlling one … most cops just drive around on their scooter or in the car for fun … to have a nice day out … :ohreally:

4

True. Research indicates that for most crimes it’s not the toughness of the penalty that matters, it’s the risk of getting caught. Which, in Taiwan, is close to zero.

5

Still no sign of DUI being applied to cyclists, though.
Or an end to booze sales in petrol stations.
Taiwan is still ok.

6

So funny, they get sooo upset over drunk driving and right turns at red lights, but people are throwing U turns in front of police stations all the time and they don’t even care.

7

Legal eagles correct me if I’m wrong. However, AFAIK if you get caught drink driving on your scooter you are still allowed to drive your car. The DUI offence is linked to the vehicle driven. Totally nuts.

8

Someday they should also consider rethinking their driving tests and courses. As annoying as they are, road blocks serve a purpose here, unfortunately the types that are regular drinks/drivers tend not to be intelligent enough to get the picture.

At least the gov chases in, if nothing else. I dont even mind road blocks anymore as there are just so many drunk/high drivers that i hate to say they are useful. there is an accident on our road, out in the country, pretty much every single night. and the few i have been the first person out to take care of the fuckers, they have all been ethanol related.

9

As we all know, they need to get tougher on all kinds of shit.

I was cycling at dusk today, and a black SUV came towards me down a long straight road. He had his front lights on (good), but they were bright red. No white in sight. Until he got closer, it looked for all the world like he was reversing. That’s just the kind of crap that causes accidents here, but he’ll NEVER be stopped by anyone.

10

China Post editorial today called for a zero tolerance approach.

chinapost.com.tw/editorial/t … -short.htm

11

[quote=“cfimages”]China Post editorial today called for a zero tolerance approach.

chinapost.com.tw/editorial/t … -short.htm[/quote]

This is crap. Zero tolerance is unrealistic. If someone has a beer or glass of wine with dinner they are more than capable enough of driving safely.

Why the hell doesn’t Taiwan crack down on the numerous rule violators on the road first and create a culture of defensive driving? This will do far more to curb accidents and deaths than any zero tolerance policy will.

I am against drinking and driving and genuinely think it is wrong, but I also drive a car every day and if I happen to have a beer while at a dinner, I want to be able to drive my car home. If I have five beers, obviously the car stays. For laws to work they need to be reasonable, and people driving around town with a one or two beer ‘buzz’ are not the problem, it is the people who get blotto and already have an aggressive driving style.

12

wrong, wrong, wrong some more, and…not correct.

No nation/state, colony, community, clan or tribe has ever figured out how to mix modern society and alcohol. Consequences deter many, but the degenerate masses will always remain; drinking, driving and killing The real problem in Taiwan is compensation.

Requiring appropriate insurance will begin to change things. It’s certainly not going to happen overnight, but the consequences (or lack there of) for reckless behaviors are absurd in Taiwan. I think a good start would be by making people 'pay for their play"

Everyone knows that the problems and root causes of injustice here aren’t limited to drunk driving laws, but more the overall approach to law in the Republic of China. A constitution written in the shadow of an abdicated dynasty and by characters historically defined as communist sympathizers and ‘imperiophiles’ is hardly the backbone a society escalates to for justice. In a philosophy where the vakue of the ‘self’ is inconsequential to the ‘whole’, justice will always suffer.

Read some ‘Confucian Classics’ and you’ll soon understand why your dead body on the side of the road has a very small red envelope price tag on it. Don’t let the chattering hens at the Legislative Yuan fool you into thinking
YOU
are important.

T

13

[quote=“Deuce Dropper”][quote=“cfimages”]China Post editorial today called for a zero tolerance approach.

chinapost.com.tw/editorial/t … -short.htm[/quote]

This is crap. Zero tolerance is unrealistic. If someone has a beer or glass of wine with dinner they are more than capable enough of driving safely.

Why the hell doesn’t Taiwan crack down on the numerous rule violators on the road first and create a culture of defensive driving? This will do far more to curb accidents and deaths than any zero tolerance policy will.

I am against drinking and driving and genuinely think it is wrong, but I also drive a car every day and if I happen to have a beer while at a dinner, I want to be able to drive my car home. If I have five beers, obviously the car stays. For laws to work they need to be reasonable, and people driving around town with a one or two beer ‘buzz’ are not the problem, it is the people who get blotto and already have an aggressive driving style.[/quote]

Even one beer will impair your reaction times. You need to cut out drinking before driving altogether. I know it’s a pain and I myself have winged it on occasion with just one beer and food, but only for short distances.
You need to have 100% no tolerance here especially in Taiwan. They don’t seem to get black and white.

Also Taipei and some other places have loads of roadblocks and enforcement. Then Taichung has basically no enforcement. The highway police need to step up aswell, useless shower.

14

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Even one beer will impair your reaction times. You need to cut out drinking before driving altogether. I know it’s a pain and I myself have winged it on occasion with just one beer and food, but only for short distances.
You need to have 100% no tolerance here especially in Taiwan. They don’t seem to get black and white.[/quote]
You have a point - zero tolerance would at least force the police to actually get off their flabby backsides and do something - but I think DD is correct. Drink driving is a symptom, not the problem itself. People have no understanding that a car is dangerous machine, and they also have no understanding that dangerous machines are, well, dangerous. I’ve seen people do outrageous things with power tools and industrial equipment - things that would get you fired on the spot in Europe. And as achdizzy said: why should they care? The boss who tells his employee it’s OK to use a lathe without safety goggles is the same boss who doesn’t have to pay compensation when said employee loses an eye (I have an acquaintance in precisely this position). If the consequence of splattering some stranger across the tarmac is a 6000NT fine, it’s going to happen quite often.

Taiwan’s driving culture is stuck somewhere around 1920. Exactly the same sort of things - reckless driving, drink driving, driving without helmets etc - went on in Europe and the US. It took us a long time to figure out this was Stupid. It’ll take the same length of time for Taiwan to achieve that result, although hopefully cars will be obsolete long before then.

15

Drink driving and reckless driving is still a problem in europe and the US. Let’s not pretend otherwise. However, what really changed in the last 20 years is that for most people drink driving is now socially unacceptable. That cultural shift needs to happen here as well.

16

Drink driving? Is this how you say it across the seas?

I’m in favor of draconian measures for about 5 years on all traffic offenses. Knock some sense into the Taiwanese. Then they can ease off.

17

Drink driving? Is this how you say it across the seas? [/quote]

Yesh. Mainly when we’ve had a few.

18

[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote=“Deuce Dropper”][quote=“cfimages”]China Post editorial today called for a zero tolerance approach.

chinapost.com.tw/editorial/t … -short.htm[/quote]

This is crap. Zero tolerance is unrealistic. If someone has a beer or glass of wine with dinner they are more than capable enough of driving safely.

Why the hell doesn’t Taiwan crack down on the numerous rule violators on the road first and create a culture of defensive driving? This will do far more to curb accidents and deaths than any zero tolerance policy will.

I am against drinking and driving and genuinely think it is wrong, but I also drive a car every day and if I happen to have a beer while at a dinner, I want to be able to drive my car home. If I have five beers, obviously the car stays. For laws to work they need to be reasonable, and people driving around town with a one or two beer ‘buzz’ are not the problem, it is the people who get blotto and already have an aggressive driving style.[/quote]

Even one beer will impair your reaction times. You need to cut out drinking before driving altogether. I know it’s a pain and I myself have winged it on occasion with just one beer and food, but only for short distances.
You need to have 100% no tolerance here especially in Taiwan. They don’t seem to get black and white.

[/quote]

I disagree. One beer and you are fine to operate a motor vehicle. Zero tolerance will do more harm than good. It is an overreaction, and too severe, kind of like cutting people’s hands off who steal.

We drive while eating, drinking (non-alcoholic), talking on the phone, gazing out the side window, messing with the radio etc… All those are way more distracting and dangerous than one unit of alcohol. Perhaps we should just make all those in car cameras everyone seems to have now mandatory and start policing every single bit of distracted driving too, since it is dangerous. Police the shit out of everyone and everything, collect more cash from tickets to further fatten politicians pockets.

0.08 is a reasonable limit. I am not sure what it is in Taiwan, but I am guessing it is similar and reasonable.

19

Altough I enjoy your posts DD, I will use my greater powers of debating and tell you you are wrong far too often these days, tsk tsk.

Just check the research, one beer cuts down driving ability (what little there was to start with). It stops the usual excuse, ’ I didn’t know I drank that much’. Just don’t mix alcohol with heavy machinery.

The other issues you mention also had laws against them.

20

proposed jail time if :

Breath analyser 0.55 or blood alchohol content 0.11 pct and above to get 2 years max sentence if caught driving/riding.