I saw the yahoo cabbie from the OP today. he was parked on the big zebra crossing in front of Shida (on Heping), on the right side of the road. He was waiting for the Shida road light to change so he could follow the scooters across the light. The light changed, and everybody walked, effectively leaving him stuck there, blocking the foot traffic. What an asshole.
I am not making this up. His face is unmistakable, with those bright red lips. and the beach shirt.
[quote=“Dangermouse”]So yesterday I’m wanting to turn left into a side road…
Anyway, the police invite he and I to the station where I make a quick report. He gets issued a ticket for running the red and crossing the double yellow…[/quote]
BRAVO BRAVO 
[quote=“redwagon”]:roflmao:
But having said that, you’re lucky he called the cops and not 20 of his buddies… :s[/quote]
TRUE and next time you can be sure he will call his buddies
:bravo:
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]I dunno. Hate to be the contrarian here, but Taiwan traffic requires a little social greese, even if it is a little leeway for a taxi pulling a fast one. It’s all about keeping everything moving.
HG[/quote]
And everything would move bether if everyone where folowing the rules.
I would not care if all of them did not like forigners since I like none of them. There honking and rude driving. I try to give way to other drivers, but I block taxi drivers. I would rather cross sahara on my knes that taking a Taiwanese taxi and therby suporting this low life skum.
After reading this thread I think I nead a few doctrs to help me remove this smile off my face.
[quote=“Stian”]:bravo:
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]I dunno. Hate to be the contrarian here, but Taiwan traffic requires a little social greese, even if it is a little leeway for a taxi pulling a fast one. It’s all about keeping everything moving.
HG[/quote]
And everything would move bether if everyone where folowing the rules.
I would not care if all of them did not like forigners since I like none of them. There honking and rude driving. I try to give way to other drivers, but I block taxi drivers. I would rather cross sahara on my knes that taking a Taiwanese taxi and therby suporting this low life skum.
After reading this thread I think I nead a few doctrs to help me remove this smile off my face.[/quote]
i used to have a very dim view of Taiwan taxi drivers. And a lot of them really dont deserve much respect. But picture workign 12 hours a day in TAipei traffic? And braving criminals too, and mean people and disrepectful people. I know i wouldnt want to work as a taiwan cabbie. And really they provide (for the most part) a very much needed service and at a workable price. A cab ride from the Bart (subway) here for a few miles would cost about ten bucks. In taiwan that would be far less.
I say , sure , some taxi drivers are not nice . But the majority are pretty normal , hard working decent humans. There are the thugs and mis-fits sure. Even criminal. But i do think probably 80pct of them are pretty ok?
I personly regard anny person honking the horn in trafick to be a pice of shit without understanding for others.
I also consider my father in law to be at the same level as this bastards.
Honking the horn make noice pulution and change nothing exspect making noice and making me show the midle finger to who ever do it.
Absolutely incorrect. Honestly, the more I read from you the more I think you just spout things off the top of your head with absolutely no idea of their veracity.
I can’t find the statistics right now, but the figure in FACT is pretty much the complete opposite to the one you speculate at – around 80% of taxi drivers here are ex-cons, with an unusually high percentage having served time for crimes of violence.
Damned, I made it a point to study the taxi-drivers’ technique for a few months before I bought my first car here. I think that have served me well - My driving style is like a toned down taxi-driver’s (no honking or red-light crossing), and have not had a single accident for 13 years and 3 cars (knock wood).
Absolutely incorrect. Honestly, the more I read from you the more I think you just spout things off the top of your head with absolutely no idea of their veracity.
I can’t find the statistics right now, but the figure in FACT is pretty much the complete opposite to the one you speculate at – around 80% of taxi drivers here are ex-cons, with an unusually high percentage having served time for crimes of violence.[/quote]
maybe your right. lets send all of Taipeis taxi drivers to NEW YORK city and do an exchange. WE get
their cabs with their drivers and their fares and let them have Taipeis cabs, drivers and fares.
i wonder who will be happier then? People in NYC or people in Taipei (assuming of course that we can get the taipei cabbies to learn the roads in nyc and vice versa for the sake of this argument).
even if 80pct of them are ex cons, and im not disputing this at all. Fact is 80pct of the time you get there pretty much intact yes?? or no?? At least 80pct of the time you get there intact? Iv ridden cabs in TAiwan a good part of my life and i have NEVER been in a cab and got in an accident. Iv had my share of cabbies that i disliked, but my personal view was that 80pct of the time i had an “ok” cab ride. and 100pct of the time i got there ALIVE and fairly sane.
maybe its different for you? that may be so. I can only speak of my personal experience over the decades iv been in Taiwan. Thank you 
80% ex-cons? That sounds like a lot… any reliable source for that?
While complaining about local taxi driving, foreigners should maybe think about that probably most of these drivers have never been abroad, let alone been driving there. So I doubt they have a clue about what foreigners think is proper behavior in traffic. All they know is how people drive in Taiwan, and based on that, running red lights, stopping whereever they like, or cutting people off is completely acceptable and the only reason why it may be wrong is that cops could issue a ticket for it.
Imagine a Taiwanese guy, who temporarily lives in New York, confronts a cab driver in a way DM did, trying to give the driver a lesson in proper behavior on the street? What do you think the response would be? NY cab driver would certainly shout something like “Who the F*** are YOU? Go away or I run you over. If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from.”
You see, one part of being in a foreign land is that it is different from home. I have long giving up complaining and now just try to relax while avoiding coming in contact with those morons. If I feel the need to teach locals about how to do things better, I focus on family, friends, and colleagues who are willing to listen. On the streets I try to be a good example for driving behavior, though oftentimes it’s very difficult to not violate any traffic rules without looking stupid.
in my experience of cabbies 10% are great, 60% are low to medium grade assholes, and 30% are scum that should be put back behind bars… that said I am utterly amazed that of all the insane taxi rides over the years, I’ve never been in a traffic accident in a taxi… YMMV… 
funny they say something similar bout NYC cabbies too 
[quote=“plasmatron”]I am utterly amazed that of all the insane taxi rides over the years, I’ve never been in a traffic accident in a taxi… YMMV… [/quote]Try driving a cab sometime, it’s amazing. You’ll know exactly how Moses felt. One honk on the horn and the sea of traffic parts for you as if by magic. I would imagine only cops and cabbies know how this feels, no-one will get in your way, and no-one will crash into you. Ever. Even the most retarded and myopic of drivers will avoid you.
As to the %age of ex-con cabbies, I forget which government organ it was that provided the stats, but the last time I saw them it was about 60% that were ex-cons, but of that number, 80% had been incarcerated for violent crimes.
I haven’t taken cabs much for a few years now, but the times I have I’ve noticed an increasing number of well-spoken and seemingly well-educated guys driving them. Seems like a popular second source of income for salarymen with more mortgage than their day job can cover. The rest… well, the less said the better really.
How strange. My wife’s been driving here for nearly 15 years and she finds these things quite unacceptable. So do the many other people who’ve driven me here at one point or the other. When they see this kind of shit, they ALWAYS curse at such drivers, or at least comment on what arseholes they are. They DO NOT drive like that.
DM took a stand against an arsehole. He was completely in the right to do so. This was backed up by the police of this country (a Taiwanese guy, in case you hadn’t noticed).
Yeah, of course you can hide from it and pretent it hasn’t happened or that its somehow “acceptable” and I agree that many people do exactly that. On the other hand, there are also many people who have decided that they won’t be walked all over by such arseholes and I applaud them for doing so.
How refreshing it is to see someone getting outraged by this kind of thing – all too often, the only time you see this kind of reaction is on the front page of the newspaper (again, written by Taiwanese people) when a fucktard like Fat Pleb has flouted the rules of his country a step too far and smeared some poor bastard all over the pavement.
If you think DM’s reaction is only a “foreigner” reaction, you my friend are deeply out of touch.
How strange. My wife’s been driving here for nearly 15 years and she finds these things quite unacceptable. So do the many other people who’ve driven me here at one point or the other. When they see this kind of shit, they ALWAYS curse at such drivers, or at least comment on what arseholes they are. They DO NOT drive like that.
DM took a stand against an arsehole. He was completely in the right to do so. This was backed up by the police of this country (a Taiwanese guy, in case you hadn’t noticed).
Yeah, of course you can hide from it and pretent it hasn’t happened or that its somehow “acceptable” and I agree that many people do exactly that. On the other hand, there are also many people who have decided that they won’t be walked all over by such arseholes and I applaud them for doing so.
How refreshing it is to see someone getting outraged by this kind of thing – all too often, the only time you see this kind of reaction is on the front page of the newspaper (again, written by Taiwanese people) when a fucktard like Fat Pleb has flouted the rules of his country a step too far and smeared some poor bastard all over the pavement.
If you think DM’s reaction is only a “foreigner” reaction, you my friend are deeply out of touch.[/quote]
:bravo:
yes and i too have been lucky to have escaped harm in Taiwans cabs even tho i often thought i should have a crash helmet on as its like a Gran Prix. And imagine that was in the days when no seat belts were required or worn either !!!
however, i remember a very horrific picture that i saw at the fire house in front of the main train station. Where they had put up some pictures of traffic accidents to scare people into being careful (they used to go around with a van and showed many very graphic and gory accident pics for the general public to see , young and old , of accidents. This was in a time when Taipeis sidewalks had the steel railings alongside the road to keep people from jaywalking. Well many accidents found the top rail piercing cars and hurting, or killing people.
there was this picture of such an accident. A taxi had run off the road into one of these railings and the top bar intruded from the front of the car into the front seat passenger. it pierced her breast and inpaled her against the seat, went thru the seat and impaled another lady sitting in the back seat behind this first lady. The first lady was in her 30s it looked like and the lady in the back probably 40s or so.
i still have a mental image of that picture in my brain. forever there !!!
can u imagine. the second of impact where the bar comes shooting in and impales a lady right thru her breast (clearly shown in the pic) and thru the seat , impaling the second woman thru her belly. and both of them just died there. i guess nobody could do anything in time
so for sure taxis have resulted in injuries and death to passengers and pedestrians and what have you.
the way they race around ,its a wonderment how many times one makes it to ones destination.
I noticed that too. In fact I commented on it to a driver the last time I was in Taiwan. He said in his case, his sons had chipped in and bought the cab so he wouldn’t go nuts in his retirement. And yes, I do see the flawed logic in their thinking.
The creepy weirdo quotient seemed to me to be in decline, so I wouldn’t be at all suprised by the revision from 80% to 60%. However, is that the same in say, Taichung? On a weirdo taxi driver rating Taichuing gets two arse plugs from me.
HG
New York cab drivers aren’t as dangerous as Taiwan taxi drivers by a long shot. However, most of them seem to have their roots in third world countries which may explain the driving.
Some of you are missing the point, though. I was rudely gestured to move out of the way and he stuck his head out of the window and shouted at me. Taiwan or New York - I’m not moving.
I can accept that. But even so, the majority of drivers in Taiwan, although immensly stupid and unaware of their surroundings, don’t take advantage of other people and take as many liberties against the law as taxi drivers do.
If you hear a honk, more than likely it’s a taxi driver. If you see a car run a red - taxi. If you see an accident, more often than not there is a taxi involved somewhere.
When morons endanger my life, I have something to say.
I don’t really feel the need to teach anyone anything unless they affect me personally.
One I was taking went into the back of a car at a set of lights, and I ended up on the bonnet of another near Taipei 101 while walking across the crossing (green man). I’ve only been here 3 years. Guess you could call it luck.
oh sorry i forgot to mention that when i was a child a taxi did completely run me over. just hit me and ran right over me. his wheels didnt touch me and i simply got back up as he sped away. the people around me were incredulous and my nanny probably had her first heart attack at all of 19 years old. !!!
the good LORd was watching over me that day !!! And the angels made sure that i felt zero pain even. I felt no impact or anything. just saw the cab coming as i was crossing the street. Then he hit me and passed over me. And i got up and watched him drive off at a high speed !!
i went home with my babysitter to watch tv and neither she nor i told my mom .
yes and i too have been lucky to have escaped harm in Taiwans cabs even tho i often thought i should have a crash helmet on as its like a Gran Prix. And imagine that was in the days when no seat belts were required or worn either !!!
however, i remember a very horrific picture that i saw at the fire house in front of the main train station. Where they had put up some pictures of traffic accidents to scare people into being careful (they used to go around with a van and showed many very graphic and gory accident pics for the general public to see , young and old , of accidents. This was in a time when Taipeis sidewalks had the steel railings alongside the road to keep people from jaywalking. Well many accidents found the top rail piercing cars and hurting, or killing people.
there was this picture of such an accident. A taxi had run off the road into one of these railings and the top bar intruded from the front of the car into the front seat passenger. it pierced her breast and inpaled her against the seat, went thru the seat and impaled another lady sitting in the back seat behind this first lady. The first lady was in her 30s it looked like and the lady in the back probably 40s or so.
i still have a mental image of that picture in my brain. forever there !!!
[/quote]
I just saw a bloody corpse on the side of the road Monday morning (head-on with a container truck) so that image is still in my head. Let’s say he didn’t have much left of HIS head.
I wonder why they don’t have that jaywalking van anymore? Why not post gory ads or leave wrecked vehicles at the side of the road with a sign on it saying “Speed Kills” or something?
I got alot of awful images stuck in my head, (like the Chief bending over in a sarong picking up a newspaper)
One of the Jay-walking van pictures had a picture of an elderly lady that was split in half from cunt to head with a tread mark
across the entire body.
That made me stop eating let alone stop jay walking.
