Why cant they regulate the tour bus industry a lot better? Heres another horrible bus crash. Probably a driver not knowledgeable about driving that road and also could be another case of a poorly maintained bus as well.
they can do anything they like to regulate the bus industry in terms of maintenance and safety standards (although this will never happen, too many hong baos flying back and forth) but what really leads to these bus tragedies is the same thing that causes regular car and bike smashes, good old Taiwanese cowboy driving… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Taiwanese cannot or will not grasp the concepts of risk, cause and effect and potential repercussions of dangerous actions… drivers of every kind of vehicle, but especially heavy vehicles, trucks, busses and the like, careen around at insane speeds, through densely populated, built up or steep mountainous areas in their atrociously maintained vehicles on the very brink of losing control without even one nanosecond spared to think “what if…” willful, total and unthinking contempt for the safety and lives of others… a bus accident like this makes the news because multiple deaths and injuries from one crash make good news (read: tabloid gutter press) headlines, but the cumulative carnage from the hundreds of smashes like it that happen everyday but never make the news is far worse…
The fact that the vast majority of people who drive for a living in Taiwan are elementary school drop out, binlang chewing, whisby swilling, flip flop wearing half wits doesn’t help… the transport companies that have friends in low places and use hong baos to bring their equipment and vehicles up to “standard” don’t help either… but the single most glaringly obvious reason behind this and every horror smash like it is Taiwan’s fundamental lack of a police force… when will the anarchy, treachery and carnage get too much for even the backwards village mentality of the average Chen and make Taiwanese people decide they want an actual police force and the rule of law, not some poorly trained, over paid “see no evil, hear no evil” chimps in blue uniforms?.. sadly for the future of Taiwan I think I know the answer to that question… never…
Everyone is always “not knowledgeable about driving that road” the first time they drive along it. That is no excuse. That is called carelessness and driver error.
Go and drive in the mountains and smell the air … smell the brakes? Hot brakes don’t brake … but who cares, they only hurry on.
They never ever were told the idea of “slowing down with the engine”, they even race down to the next corner and than push their brakes to the limits. Basic ideas of how to drive in the mountains have no space in this advanced driver training with the backwards S parking stuff.
i remember decades ago a city bus would roll off that road now and then. but i havent heard of such a thing for over a decade or longer. Ever since they started to pay attention to making sure they had decent buses and drivers that knew about the dangers of coming down on that road.
Anyone got a map that shows wherebouts this is? Is it going up the front or back of YMShan?
I know the roads get steep around YMS but I can’t imagine a bus careening off the edge. How friggin fast was he going?
And as a swipe at the TT, what the company does doesn’t deserve its own paragraph at the end of the article. It should be incorporated into the first sentence.
Anyone got a map that shows wherebouts this is? Is it going up the front or back of YMShan?
I know the roads get steep around YMS but I can’t imagine a bus careening off the edge. How friggin fast was he going?
And as a swipe at the TT, what the company does doesn’t deserve its own paragraph at the end of the article. It should be incorporated into the first sentence.[/quote]
yang teh tah tao usually refers to the main road that goes up to yangmingshan, not one of the backroads.
Anyone got a map that shows wherebouts this is? Is it going up the front or back of YMShan?
I know the roads get steep around YMS but I can’t imagine a bus careening off the edge. How friggin fast was he going?
And as a swipe at the TT, what the company does doesn’t deserve its own paragraph at the end of the article. It should be incorporated into the first sentence.[/quote]
yang teh tah tao usually refers to the main road that goes up to yangmingshan, not one of the backroads.[/quote]
Since you aren’t in TW, and you can’t read carefully, JDSmith was aware that Yangde Da Dao is the main road on Yamingshan, and that it goes up, around the top, and down the other side to Chin Shan. He specifically said front/back.
Anyway, I would assume that the likeliest scenario after reading the story was that the direct sales company employees (charter tour bus) were on the back of YMS, going to a hotspring restaurant. It’s much steeper and more innaccessible over there, and as they said, rescue efforts were initially hampered. However, if anyone can pinpoint it exactly it would be interesting.
In Europe most buses have electromagnetic or oil pressure retarders on the drive shaft … helps a lot on braking power, saves on brake pads and improves safety …
According to my colleague the bus was on it’s way back (i.e. coming down Yangde Ave. towards Taipei) and plunged down after passing Yong Gong Rd., somewhere on the stretched marked here:
Edit: Link to Google Maps
That can be a nasty stretch of road in heavy traffic.
Anyone got a map that shows wherebouts this is? Is it going up the front or back of YMShan?
I know the roads get steep around YMS but I can’t imagine a bus careening off the edge. How friggin fast was he going?
And as a swipe at the TT, what the company does doesn’t deserve its own paragraph at the end of the article. It should be incorporated into the first sentence.[/quote]
yang teh tah tao usually refers to the main road that goes up to yangmingshan, not one of the backroads.[/quote]
Since you aren’t in TW, and you can’t read carefully, JDSmith was aware that Yangde Da Dao is the main road on Yangmingshan, and that it goes up, around the top, and down the other side to Jinshan. He specifically said front/back.
Anyway, I would assume that the likeliest scenario after reading the story was that the direct sales company employees (charter tour bus) were on the back of YMS, going to a hotspring restaurant. It’s much steeper and more innaccessible over there, and as they said, rescue efforts were initially hampered. However, if anyone can pinpoint it exactly it would be interesting.[/quote]
OH MOnkey , MOnkey !! Thank you very much for excusing me by virtue of physical presence. However, un-beknown to you, the last few years I was in Taiwan , I commuted from my home in Wanli to Ginshan and then to Taipei by way of Yangmingshan. And unless I had been driving like Stevie Wonder (ie blind) I was very much under the impression that the road from Ginshan to Yangmingshan is known as YANG GIN (for Yangmingshan to Ginshan) gong ru (public road) and that Yang Teh Tao Tao specifically refers to the main road from Yangmingshan down to Shihlin. And in fact several buses have been known to have gone over the edge on that road as its quite steep and traffic does move pretty briskly. IN fact to my knowledge very few bus mishaps have occurred on the back side down to Ginshan. But what the heck do I know? I just have driven that road every day for about five years?
Interestingly, the red arrow points to a spot on the road where there’s a speed trap camera. I wonder if someone slammed on the brakes when they noticed the camera and lost control? I’ve seen it happen…
I am currently living right near where the bus accident took place, in typical Taipei police incompetence, it was a mess.Yang De is often just a drag strip to most drivers. I have often been passed by cars at well over 100km/h (them not me), this includes trucks and buses as well. When I approached the bottom of the hill at about 7 PM the police would not let anyone through or even say anything, they just grunted and pointed down the side road. I proceeded to try and go up at the next road, after going up for awhile it was pure gridlock in both directions. I eventually went up from Tienmu rd and got to the accident at 8:30. The accident was actually above where I am living, so what to do now. The police just said too bad, but one guy told me there was a path down to where I am living, so I did manage to get home.
The accident is terrible, and from what I have read that bus has 9 tickets for speeding and running red lights (no idea about drivers etc). I also heard the bus was going over 100 km/hr (again just hearsay). But I can tell you there is no enforcement of traffic rules on that road by the police, but they sure were good and closing it and doing nothing to lessen the problems of flow up other roads. There were at least 15 police at the bottom of Yang De and I even saw other police giving tickets to people turning on red in little lanes nearby. You think they would have done a slightly better job of traffic control in the area, but wait they are Taipei police LOL!!
[quote=“Monkey D. Luffy”]
Anyway, I would assume that the likeliest scenario after reading the story was that the direct sales company employees (charter tour bus) were on the back of YMS, going to a hotspring restaurant.[/quote]
Oh, these are the people that call you up fourteen times a day, always at the most inconvenient times, and then try to sell you some useless thing in the most pushy and obnoxious manner possible?
Suddenly I feel a lot less compassion for the victims… 
During the rainy season here in Da Keng I pull about one car a week out of the mountain rainwater ditches. 90% of the time they are unfamiliar with these driving conditions, panic when another vehicle approaches and drive straight into the ditch. Going downhill the problem usually seems to a particularly bad combination of this plus brake fade, where they hold the brakes constantly instead of shifting to a lower gear (when asked, not one of these people even knew what ‘1’ or ‘2’ actually did on their automatic transmission!)
A few weeks back when the rain got really heavy there was a sudden rush of idiots driving up our mountain lane in 2WD Escapes thinking that owning an SUV means they can automatically drive through apalling weather conditions on dangerous, slippy, unfamiliar country lanes. I got caught in a particularly bad downpour as I was driving downhill one afternoon and a few large trees came down in front of my truck. I started reversing back up (not enough room to turn around) and some woman driving a gold Escape (says it all) kept beeping and wouldn’t budge, so I had to get out and tell her about 300 times there was a blockage while getting completely f’ing soaked in the process. After she finally accepted this fact I watched the extremely painful image of her trying to reverse uphill around a bend… after 15 minutes of watching her completely failing to grasp the physics of reversing I caved in to impatience and drove the thing for her. I told her that the safest thing to do was wait inside the car under cover of our community area and she then started getting angry as if it was my damn fault she came up here in a piece of shit SUV with the driving skills of a blind squirrel. So I drew them a map with an alternative route back down but made it clear that route was very dangerous in this kind of weather and people had died there from falling rocks and trees. Of course they go anyway, berating me giving them bad luck by talking of death. About two hours later when the rain has subsided I drive up the alternative route to see if anyone has got stuck and needs help. To the considerable credit of the local residents, there are a few guys with big trucks here who do the same and pull people out of ditches etc. Go Da Keng 
Anyway, not far up I find Miss SUV Prissy Bitches stuck in half a foot of mud with a dead engine so I tow them out and one of the trucks tows them back down to the community area. A proper tow truck is called and she leaves without saying thankyou to anyone. And you just know she will go and do this again next week.
The mountain roads around Da Keng are actually very well maintained, so lord knows what other areas are like. Bloody townies.
[quote=“redwagon”][quote=“Monkey D. Luffy”]
Anyway, I would assume that the likeliest scenario after reading the story was that the direct sales company employees (charter tour bus) were on the back of YMS, going to a hotspring restaurant.[/quote]
Oh, these are the people that call you up fourteen times a day, always at the most inconvenient times, and then try to sell you some useless thing in the most pushy and obnoxious manner possible?
Suddenly I feel a lot less compassion for the victims… [/quote]
No … just another MLM, pyramid scheme company …
Anyone got a map that shows wherebouts this is? Is it going up the front or back of YMShan?
I know the roads get steep around YMS but I can’t imagine a bus careening off the edge. How friggin fast was he going?
And as a swipe at the TT, what the company does doesn’t deserve its own paragraph at the end of the article. It should be incorporated into the first sentence.[/quote]
yang teh tah tao usually refers to the main road that goes up to yangmingshan, not one of the backroads.[/quote]
Since you aren’t in TW, and you can’t read carefully, JDSmith was aware that Yangde Da Dao is the main road on Yangmingshan, and that it goes up, around the top, and down the other side to Jinshan. He specifically said front/back.
Anyway, I would assume that the likeliest scenario after reading the story was that the direct sales company employees (charter tour bus) were on the back of YMS, going to a hotspring restaurant. It’s much steeper and more innaccessible over there, and as they said, rescue efforts were initially hampered. However, if anyone can pinpoint it exactly it would be interesting.[/quote]
OH MOnkey , MOnkey !! Thank you very much for excusing me by virtue of physical presence. However, un-beknown to you, the last few years I was in Taiwan , I commuted from my home in Wanli to Ginshan and then to Taipei by way of Yangmingshan. And unless I had been driving like Stevie Wonder (ie blind) I was very much under the impression that the road from Ginshan to Yangmingshan is known as YANG GIN (for Yangmingshan to Ginshan) gong ru (public road) and that Yang Teh Tao Tao specifically refers to the main road from Yangmingshan down to Shilin. And in fact several buses have been known to have gone over the edge on that road as its quite steep and traffic does move pretty briskly. IN fact to my knowledge very few bus mishaps have occurred on the back side down to Ginshan. But what the heck do I know? I just have driven that road every day for about five years?[/quote]
I stand corrected on the name of the road from the top down to Chinshan. Many thanks. Unbeknownst to you, I’ve been over YMS at least 120 times myself, and know the main roads (up and down both sides) and back/side roads well, driving, hitching, riding scooter and bicycle, and hiking…not just going to and fro to work.
However, I still have the general impression you can’t read or write very precisely, and everything you just wrote typifies that. BTW you said last few years-or every day for 5 years. Which is it? What did you really add to this thread, apart from correcting JDS in a useless manner, then me? At least I took a stab at where it could be, and pointed out they were direct sales employees on a tour. Please don’t reply, if you must, take it to PM. We’re off topic enough.
Back on topic-and my last for this thread-Maoman and JDS were right, the driver must have been going fast down that stretch. Lucky man escaped without serious injuries. Wonder if he feels massive guilt?
I don’t mind being corrected, especially when I am wrong. But actually, I was talking about the back road around Tienmu, not the backside of YMS, so I was way off base, not surprising because I don’t know the name of any roads up or down YMS.
But please gents, as I am one of the “moderators” of this slice of forumosa, let the personal shit go. It’s not a crime to post from overseas, even when the overseas one actually reads the TT on what seems a fairly regular basis, which is also not a crime…well, at least not one written down…yet.
peace
jdsmith
co-conut mod LIT