Er…That isn’t quite true. The article in the Taipei Times linked in the first post in this thread and quoted in the second post in this thread says:
[quote]Yu could face fines and up to two years in prison for vehicular manslaughter, police said, depending on the results of the investigation and whether Wagster’s family seeks to pursue charges in the courts.
Such cases are often settled out of court, police said, after the parties involved reach agreement on compensation.[/quote]
My question concerned the accuracy of the reporter’s statement and the use of the term “are often settled out of court” as being ‘normal practice.’ To both of my concerns the answers are, regretably, yes. Since this is not the normal practice (out of court settlement for vehicular homicide while under the influence) in most developed countries, Taiwanese society is full well due for critical comment.
I suspect that a lot of the traffic problems and shit police attitude here could be improved by redifining police targets. Every day I drive past a traffic cop on one of those mini free-ways. The limit is 80kph but it could be at least 110 and still be safe. I have never seen an accident there, and honestly, i think the likleyhood of there being an accident there is so remote as to be almost zero. Yet the police car is nearly always there. Why? I can think of two reasons.
He knows that people are going to drive over 80 there as it is a straight piece of freeway with very little traffic. Hence he knows that he is going to be able to meet his quota.
It is on a strech that has a fairly short distance between exits so he can get on and off the freeway without having to do too much driving himself.
The one reason that he should be there but is obviously furthest from his mind is road safety. How do I know this?
See the above about the likelyhood of an accident here. There is no safety case for what he is doing.
He is parked on the hard shoulder and often is not paying attention to the oncoming traffic as he leans on the back of his car filling out tickets - that is some lack of safetly awareness for a traffic cop on a high-speed road.
He has stopped me twice (not for a while mind, I’m more careful now) and not fined me because of the hasle involved. He didn’t even make me change seats with the wife when he realised that my licence was not valid.
So to the targets. It seems that police targets here are based either on the number of fines collected for specific offences or a total cash value of fines given out over a given period. Now of course this system of targets leads to the police looking for the easiest way to collect (and you can hardly blame them can you). Instead what they need is a target based on road safety ie reduce accidents in a given police area by 5% over a year. Or reduce fatalities etc. Now the fella on my freeway is wasting his time where he is. If his end of year bonus is based on saftey targets, then he sure as hell isn’t going to waste any time on my strech of freeway anymore, and cases like the one in this thread will no longer be left to the victims families to sort out. Things might even improve a little.
Butcher Boy seems to be trying to steer this timely thread in a reasonable direction. There must be some ‘Why I hate Taiwan’ threads out there for others to fume on.
But, yes - road safety is an important subject for foreigners living in Taiwan. And Butcher Boy’s interest in the motivations of the police is one I share. A friend of mine that I don’t talk to often, once told me the law enforcement / prosecution system here is, in fact, different from most countries. He had a name for it. I think he said it was remunerative instead of punative, or something like that. But he explained that enforcement efforts are planned from the top, on the basis of budgets and stuff, rather than public safety needs.
I often feel that cops out on parking ticket control wouldn’t even get involved if they say a bank robbery happening. And how many cops have let drunken foreigners drive away, simply because they’re too lazy to deal with the trouble of arresting a foreigner?
About the Kenting accident, I don’t think anyone mentioned the sad irony that the victim had actually waited several hours (or told his parents that anyway) before driving home because he suspected the roads would be too dangerous around midnight, which I think was his original ETA. I can’t really remember, but I think I read it in the Taipei Times report on the incident. The victim also lived quite near Kenting, and was probably well aware of the driving accidents associated with Spring Scream.
The stretch of road, I believe, is just north of Kenting. If it was the place I think it was, I’d like to point out that it’s a really dangerous stretch. For about 200 meters, it’s like driving through a county fair on a busy weekend. The shoulder becomes a parking lot along both sides of the road, which people treat as a highway. The road should be redesigned there. Actually, I think Kenting should have a bypass built around it. There is lots of farmland there to use.
I hope everyone will heed these words which many experienced experts have said before: speed kills. Keep your speed down, and your chances of living longer are greatly enhanced. If you’re a typical foreigner living in Taiwan, what’s your need to be in such a hurry? (We are talking about accidents involving foreigners, aren’t we?)
[quote=“twonavels”][quote]There is no real information about how the police is reacting in this thread, but it seems that everybody’s enjoying the opportunity to throw in their “Taiwanese society is…” statements.
Attacking the Taiwanese system like that will probably just put people on the defensive, and not get any positive results.
What would be a good way to let the police/government know that people are aware of these kinds of incidents, and would like to see harsher punishment for offenders?[/quote][/quote]
You seem to be a person who manifests extreme and often uncritical ardor, fervor, or devotion in an attachment to Taiwan. I assume you don’t get out much.
If this was Japan, the local punk who killed the American would be looking at up to 15 years in prison. Its a shame that Japan no longer occupies this Chinese territory.
(Sorry I haven’t read the whole thread. Forgive me if this has already been discussed.)
Very sad indeed. That’s why I get so angry at some of these idiots who put others lives at risk (alcohol or no alcohol).
And what’s with this law for truck drivers that several of my friends have told me about? If a truck driver inures someone in an accident, he is responsible for compensation, but if he kills them then his company are responsible (or is it insurance?) so I have heard that truck drivers will often try to “finish the job”.
If there is such a law that encourages people to do this sort of thing, it’s no wonder there are so many careless idiots out there. (And the democracy thing too!!!)
You think the driver intentionally hit the victim?[/quote]
I think that taiwanisfunny’s statement was meant to be taken tongue in cheek…Meaning that he(TIF) was ironcly speculating that police could ‘say’ to the driver that "oh you meant to hit him ‘because’ you weren’t really drunk…’
[quote=“dearpeter”]enforcement efforts are planned from the top, on the basis of budgets and stuff, rather than public safety needs.[/quote]Correct. This is why the speed traps increase in number and dedication to duty toward the end of the month, in order to meet the quotas they’re set. This isn’t however unique to Taiwan. I think that most countries operate on a system whereby the efforts of traffic cops are judged by their superiors on how many tickets they hand out, and how much revenue they create. You see the same strategy in the US, of putting the traps not where they will have the most effect on reducing accidents, but instead where they will generate the most revenue.
The really amazing hole in the system is this idea that each cop is assigned to a specific duty or task and will not get involved in any other type of problem. I think we’ve all seen first hand, or in video clips on TV or circulating on the net, some cop ignoring an obvious crime in progress or a blatant violation of a civic code. If the police in this country want to get any respect at all they’re going to have to grow out of this idea that everything outside of the daily task they’ve been set is hidden by some kind of someone-else’s-problem-field.
Taiwanese/Chinese society, I am sorry to say (and good luck arguing this one with me, I’ve been the only one brave enough to try and help an injured motorcyclist at LEAST a dozen times since '89)…
Alcohol leaves the body at . The police would be perfectly capable of back-calculating the amount of alcohol present in the drivers body at the time of the accident by measuring his blood/alcohol level when he turned himself in. I know for sure they do thisin the UK and other countries.
It is so easy.
They wont do it.[/quote]
That would require a sense of duty and justice, which when it involves foreigners and traffic accidents in Taiwan is about as likely as a cop sprouting wings on his arms and a tuba on his ass and flying to Rome while playing the Brandenburg Concerto…
I was Kending last weekend for spring scream and saw the aftermath.
I drove past the accident site as the ambulance was leaving and the bystanders said it was a foreigner that got hurt. There is no hospital in the area.
The police were out the night before and put up a road block but they were not stopping anyone that I saw.
On the weekends the town is packed solid. The town of Kending is not designed as a tourist town. It is basically a typically Taiwanese shanty town with some hotels and a beach that is not public access despite the fact that it is a national park. The South end of the beach in Kending Township is a dump with an open sewage canal. Apparently the hotels rent the beach out and the rest of the beach is used for disposing of trash and dumping raw sewage into the sea.
There are also no board walks or sidewalks. Tens of thousands of pedestrians are forced to walk in the street with thousands of cars and buses.
Accidents are quite common there on the weekends.[/quote]
Please tell me you are being overly harsh, I was thinking about going down for the first time since 1990, but after THIS description…maybe I’d better just hang out in my bathroom and bathe in raw sewage …
[quote=“acearle”]maybe I’d better just hang out in my bathroom and bathe in raw sewage …[/quote]Well, it would be cheaper…
Just look at how many more hotel rooms there are in Kenting now over 15 years ago. Where do you imagine all those sewer pipes lead to?
Taiwanese/Chinese society, I am sorry to say (and good luck arguing this one with me, I’ve been the only one brave enough to try and help an injured motorcyclist at LEAST a dozen times since '89)…[/quote]
12 times! Man you should have just left him after the 4th time. Or bought him a set of training wheels or something.
[quote=“Ric Flair”]
…
I honestly believe Taiwan cannot survive as a democracy until it has civic responsibility.
The only way this island could rise out of its third world mentality is if they ran it like Singapore.
Outside of Hong Kong - which was colonized - history has a way of showing the world that fundimentally Confucian societies cannot govern in a democratic fashion, based on civic irresponsibility.
…
It horrifies me to say this - but it needs a “parent” government. NOT a KMT or China-style government. [/quote]
If one day there is no "parent government " in Singapore, will Singapore become similar to Taiwan or China (since the majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese)?
What exactly are “Confucian societies?” Did Confucius not talk about personal responsibilities in his teaching? Do you think what people practice is really confucianism? What do they teach in public schools these days? What are the teachers and parents doing to mold their young? (I hope it’s not “nothing.”)
If one day there is no "parent government " in Singapore, will Singapore become similar to Taiwan or China (since the majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese)?[/quote]
No. I would predict a Hong Kong style of law and order and civility, juxtaposed to the verneer of barbarism lurking 'round Taiwan and China - in regards to eprsonal safety and community and loving they neighbor.
The tenants to which law and order and familial piety are (thinly) adheared to or aspired to have achieved are most certainly Confucian. It’s the Lao Tzu mixture that puts the rigidtiy of Confucianism out of the picture.
I still found it ironic, that largely Confucian societies seem to be in the larger states of chaos - excluding the Middle East - which is another can of worms (i .e. NOT Confucian but chaotic as all hell (and I ain’t goin’ there!).
Japan has been very heavily influenced by Confucianism, and they seem to be quite civil (and their previous militarism grew out of Shinto nationalism, not Confucianism).
Taiwanese/Chinese society, I am sorry to say (and good luck arguing this one with me, I’ve been the only one brave enough to try and help an injured motorcyclist at LEAST a dozen times since '89)…[/quote]
12 times! Man you should have just left him after the 4th time. Or bought him a set of training wheels or something.[/quote]
Yeah, I’m a softie, though :-D…damn them werds invariablee come back and bite me in the …
Japan was pretty much severed from China and began running on its owns.
The beauracratic corruption and political corruption in China and Taiwan are identical. The lack of real changes within the systems are identical. All of the bullshit they lob at each other is identical.
However, I forsee a brighter future for China, not Taiwan. I also realize it won’t be in our lifetimes…
…
…[/quote]Well, it would be cheaper…