hey daihatsu, that was an interesting story !!! and good for you nothing really happened !!!..
a friend of mine was riding his bike passing by Jhudong, he had a very loud pipe and well… it was noisy all the time, but kind of nice jeje…
one time it seems that when he passed a guy on a scooter he felt offended by the noise and catch my friend on the next traffic light, the the guy started to argue in chinese and my friend is foreigner… so no idea what he said, then after lots of things that the guy said and my friend ignored, he brought some kind of metallic tool from his scooter, then my friend just closed his helmet and made the sign to they guy to come and do something, and since he was wearing full leather protection and gloves with carbon… well the one on the scooter felt kind of afraid and left the scene with more complains…
A friend of mine had a hole in his muffler for a while, and old men kept coming up to him at red lights and lambasting him in thick country Taiwanese about the racket he was making. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
haha yea i’d like to see someone stupid enough to try and take on someone wearing full gear. Riding gloves with carbon fiber knuckles are like the perfect weapon already. once I heard my roommate talk about an encounter with scooter punks blocking the road in san chong, but I’ve never really seen packs of them in taibei.
You guys say scooter punks as if the punks have to specifically be on scooters… haha… in actuality, those punks have scooters only because they can’t afford real motorcycles or cars. That’s all. In Toronto, we have many different types of “gangsters” - they come in all sorts of colors and sizes. And they’re all teenagers or in their early 20s. I put the word “gangsters” in brackets, because real gangsters make money and don’t just pick fights for no reason.
Taichung is the crime capital of Taiwan! If you live there, you will see… I’ve been living in Chungho/Yungho for around three years and have yet to come across any gangs of anyone. Maybe gangs of old ladies gossiping and buying vegetables at the market, but no young punks.
I did once wave my fist at this 1993 white Honda Civic hatchback and the dude, his leopard-clad girlfriend and his betel nut-chewing buddy got out and tried to scare us. The wife was scared, but I yelled back in my best Chinese… and I guess the guy left because he discovered that although my skin is yellow, my slippers weren’t blue.
I once had two scooter punks run a red and almost hit me. I honked at them and they gave me a dirty look as if I’d done something wrong. It was first thing in the morning and I hadn’t eaten yet. So my mood wasn’t the greatest. I passed them…clipped their front tire with my rear…they went down…I didn’t.
And I find the original post interesting. Two punks on a scooter…were trying to intimidate someone in a car? I don’t get that.
[quote=“omerojs”]hey daihatsu, that was an interesting story !!! and good for you nothing really happened !!!..
a friend of mine was riding his bike passing by Jhudong, he had a very loud pipe and well… it was noisy all the time, but kind of nice jeje…
one time it seems that when he passed a guy on a scooter he felt offended by the noise and catch my friend on the next traffic light, the the guy started to argue in Chinese and my friend is foreigner… so no idea what he said, then after lots of things that the guy said and my friend ignored, he brought some kind of metallic tool from his scooter, then my friend just closed his helmet and made the sign to they guy to come and do something, and since he was wearing full leather protection and gloves with carbon… well the one on the scooter felt kind of afraid and left the scene with more complains…[/quote]
That was me. But the guy didn’t have a scooter tool. He had a telescoping wacking stick like the the police have.
The worst part is that I am the kind of guy who lets people pass in front of me as a sign of courtesy. I really don’t know what I did wrong besides being loud. 
I can still remember his face when closed my helmet and gestured him to come. Ha ha ha. Boy, did he figured fast he was not going to win that one.
That was the only time this happened to me. Usually when I see bad boys, I give them a thumbs up and smile. They do the same to me. (And I live in a bad boy town, Jhudong)
Yeah, it was rather strange, and foolish. I was thinking that if they tried anything I’d just plow through them, but I was a little concerned about getting trapped at a red light with nowhere to go.
I had a situation today after dropping my bike of at WuTian in YongHo. I needed to get a taxi and waited about 5 minutes, (that can be a long wait in Taipei) but finally a taxi came and cut across 3 lanes to get to me. I could see the bikes behind him get pissed and I tried to signal to the scooters and the taxi driver to be careful. But anyway the taxi stopped halfway in the side and middle lane, I thought as he didn’t want to hit any scooters. So the scooters stopped and I did the magical Taiwanese salute to acknowledge you have maybe inconvenienced someone, but too bad, and I did this while smiling. 2 out of the 3 scooters that finally did stop gestured back to me, like OK, no prob, but the third guy, a beetlenut chewer with his “woman” on the back, they were about 40 odd years old, well he yelled something out as I was climbing into the back of the taxi. Now I still had my leathers on, so I don’t know if these had the same magical powers as iix’s but I turned around and stood up and looked at him, opened my arms up, and said to him “What”, those are tough words… but he just kind of crossed his arms and pointed at the taxi driver and yelled something out while looking over my shoulder.
So I hopped in the back of the taxi and he continued to yell so the taxi driver wound down the front passenger window and yelled something else back. Sure it was Taiwanese, I couldn’t catch any of what they were saying. But then the scooter rider suddenly stood up as if he was going to get off the scooter, but the woman on the back hit him on the shoulder as to say, sit down.
So he yelled some more and so the taxi driver took his seatbelt off and motioned as if he was going to get out of the taxi, and the scooter guy rode off.
Don’t know what I would have done if the guy had got off his scooter when I reacted to him, my shoulder was so sore and with 2 busted fingers from stacking my bike today, but I was in a fine mood after wrecking my bike and being in pain. I have always thought it would be an idea that as soon as you see them go to get off their bike, you need to take the initiative and rush forward and kick or push them or their bike when they are off balance and take it from there…
Actually watching the scooter dude and the taxi dude, I now know how ridiculous I look when I have yelled at someone for doing something inconsiderate to me while riding, just better to steer around it and keep going, if you can…
Yeah, it was rather strange, and foolish. I was thinking that if they tried anything I’d just plow through them, but I was a little concerned about getting trapped at a red light with nowhere to go.[/quote]
You need to worry about traffic cameras as well. You could easily knock them down…but if they have connections they could trace your plate through traffic cameras and end up at your home a few days later.
[quote=“nemesis”]Maybe this should be a new thread or maybe not, but here it goes…
The statistically worst drivers on my way to work:
Mitsubishi (especially Lancers)
BMW (especially black, pimped-up ones)
Mercedes
Suzuki Solio
License plates with lots of 7s in them
License plates with “RV” or “FU” (how ironic) in them
Anyone else noticed any correlations?[/quote]
certainly bmw and mercedes make my list. i haven’t noticed the others, but i would have to add any woman in an suv and volvos (sex of driver unimportant).
when i biked (pedaled) around taiwan all my taiwanese friends asked if i was terrified by the truck drivers. but it was the bmw/mercedes/volvo ilk that came closest to killing me. volvo drivers are also among the worst in the states. imho…
[quote=“acid1394”][quote=“nemesis”]Maybe this should be a new thread or maybe not, but here it goes…
The statistically worst drivers on my way to work:
Mitsubishi (especially Lancers)
BMW (especially black, pimped-up ones)
Mercedes
Suzuki Solio
License plates with lots of 7s in them
License plates with “RV” or “FU” (how ironic) in them
Anyone else noticed any correlations?[/quote]
certainly bmw and mercedes make my list. i haven’t noticed the others, but I would have to add any woman in an suv and volvos (sex of driver unimportant).
when i biked (pedaled) around taiwan all my Taiwanese friends asked if I was terrified by the truck drivers. but it was the bmw/mercedes/volvo ilk that came closest to killing me. volvo drivers are also among the worst in the states. imho…[/quote]
I would say Mercs are far more settled than almost all other cars as drivers are always afraid of scratching their paint.In fact I always make it a point to park next to one if there’s a space available, that way my car is never dinged.
Older BMWs can be bad in traffic, as they are often driven by low class gangster scum, or small children.
Blue trucks and taxis go without saying as the lousiest drivers on Taiwan. Practically any other cars though I feel are the same. Newer cars slightly less as they are still being looked after. The older they get, the more dangerous they are. I think part reason is because lower class people afford them better than newer cars, and the fact they are already damaged doesn’t offer them any incentive.
[quote=“sulavaca”]
Blue trucks and taxis go without saying as the lousiest drivers on Taiwan. [/quote]
Definitely. I’d also add Nissan Cefiros to the list, especially black ones. I don’t know why, but almost every time I see a Nissan Cefiro it’s driven in an erratic, aggressive and dangerous manner, cutting people off and weaving from lane to lane like a moron.
[quote=“barfomcgee”][quote=“sulavaca”]
Blue trucks and taxis go without saying as the lousiest drivers on Taiwan. [/quote]
Definitely. I’d also add Nissan Cefiros to the list, especially black ones. I don’t know why, but almost every time I see a Nissan Cefiro it’s driven in an erratic, aggressive and dangerous manner, cutting people off and weaving from lane to lane like a moron.[/quote]
We had a little thread about this some time ago, [url=http://tw.forumosa.com/t/car-driver-stereotypes/30708/1