How does this not qualify as “gross negligence”? Someone died due to this woman’s actions.
You think too much. The ROC Criminal Code qualifies the conditional dolorous action as negligent, not grossly negligent. Negligence is negligence. Besides, even if we were to entertain your point, running a red light is among the most negligent behaviors in traffic. This leaves us with the question of the causative relationship between the death of the American scooter rider and the Taiwanese woman running a red light. I have already explained that relationship in my previous post.
It’s not about the outcome but the intention with which she ran the red light.
If she got confused, it’s negligence. If she just said fortuna I run that red light plus did not even look, plus traffic was approaching, it’s severe/gross negligence.
In her case, I think it’s gross negligence.
Both should be punished differently.
Wrong. That would be conditional intent. You might want to do yourself a favor and sit a semester of criminal law 101 at NTU or Soochow.
Ok then, strangely the English speaking world seems to have even more distinctions.
Gross negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care, which is likely to cause foreseeable grave injury or harm to persons, property, or both. It is conduct that is extreme when compared with ordinary Negligence, which is a mere failure to exercise reasonable care.
Can you present some support in Taiwan law for this contention Hamlet? There’s no point in going on about this ad infinitum, so if you can’t or don’t care to, I’ll ask for it to end here.
Not only in Taiwan, but also in many other jurisdictions. Seperating negligence from dolus eventualis (conditional intent) is not always easy.
Running a red traffic light on a busy road with multiple lanes is beyond recklessly taking chances and hoping for the best. Anyone who runs a red light on a busy road with several lanes (and evidently does not even look!) accepts that this could end either way. Hence conditional intent.
If that was a countryside road in the middle of rice paddies with one lane in each direction, then I would classify this as negligent behavior as the person has sufficient reason to believe that it will end well.
But let’s give the lady the benefit of the doubt and assume she did not pay attention or was daydreaming. Hence criminally negligent bodily harm.
Any updates? iIRC non professional drivers face up to two years in jail but are often sentenced to less than six months and therefore no jail term as under six months can be converted to a small fine for accidental manslaughter
This is likely what the red light runner will get.
Where I come from, the law states that at uncontrolled intersections (all, even small ones), one must yield to the right. This is rigidly enforced, too.
When I was a kid I was riding in my buddy’s car and we got T-boned at a neighborhood intersection, but because the other guy was on our right, it was classed as my buddy’s fault.
Yeah, um, because you were supposed to yield. That’s why they’re called traffic laws, not traffic suggestions.
Yeah, um, that’s what I said.
But you were not taking about one like this.
Compared to that video from Germany, Taiwan looks like a land populated by barbaric grab-what-you-can yahoos who have inexplicably been trusted with motor vehicles driven at full speed.
I feel sad.
Guy
There actually are a couple of traffic lights in Taipei I know which are turned off from time to time.
I personally liked the intersections better with the lights turned off.
The traffic was more spread out, people drove more carefully, and the left turns were easier/safer.
But ve germans always follow ze rules. But this may be because we learn driving in normal traffic, have a triffac-sign for every possible and impossible situation and the roads are not as packed as in Taiwan. Also having a policeforce relentlessly enforcing the traffic law helps.
Most germans are thinking “i hope nothing happens to me”, while i feel most taiwanese are thinking “nothing will happen. At least not to me”
When on a scooter and approaching a 4-way intersection with little or no signage, just keep your head down and look ahead and other riders who notice you will yield. The problems occur when both parties fail to look up and around.
The worst maneuver is when you’re indicating to turn right, in the process of moving, and a dafty on scooter speeds up to try and get past you on the inside assuming you’ll be able to brake in time. I’d place money on that being a major cause of scooter accidents.
I forgot to add that I am not endorsing the behavior described, it is just what I have witnessed as the norm. I don’t yet ride a motorized vehicle here.
I’m pretty sure everyone got that. 
passing on the inside is super fucked up and yet seems to be somehow acceptable.