Anyone know what the fine is for drunk driving in Taipei?
I know someone who recently got stopped for DWI. All we know so far is that he’s got to take a class but wondering what he’s got to pay in NT too.
Don’t bother preaching to me… I know better than to drink and drive.
A friend of mine had to pay about 50,000-60,000NT if I remember correctly.
And no, “A friend” wasn’t me. :s
I think drunk driving is punished by having your license suspended for 12 months and a NT$15,000-NT$60,000 fine. Refusal to be tested brings a NT$60,000 fine and your license is revoked.
Thanks for the quick reply guys.
While waiting for the 2 beers in my bloodstream to be broken down in my liver, I stood and watched the proceedings at a local DWI checkpoint Saturday night. Not that many cars out, but some 25% of all drivers were drunk. The 3 cops were calling the towing squad in all the time - you saw the husband sitting in a police car, while his own car containing wife and kids was towed. 
By the time I judged that every scrap of alcohol was gone, and I drove thru the checkpoint, the guys were busy handling the last drunk driver and packing things down. :s Their interest in the beer-smelling bignose was therefore somewhat limited. 
One thing which makes me wonder about their effiency is that they always stop testing at 2AM, at least down here.
However when they do check they do it with a venegance, every major road has at least 1 checkpoint, and at the place where I live, they have set up a pretty good trap, where you can see the checkpoint ahead of you when you are at the intersection, where I turn. If you turn down in order to avoid being checked, then they have another checkpoint waiting for you. 
How do they determine if you’re drunk? Is there a test or breathalizer (sp?)
And I remember learning somewhere that if you allow about an hour per drink that you should be okay. Is that true?
[quote=“braxtonhicks”]How do they determine if you’re drunk? Is there a test or breathalizer (sp?)
And I remember learning somewhere that if you allow about an hour per drink that you should be okay. Is that true?[/quote]
braxtonhicks,
As a person who enjoys getting lit up the best advice I can give anyone is to take a taxi whenever you drink enough to be worried about getting pulled over.
[quote=“braxtonhicks”]How do they determine if you’re drunk? Is there a test or breathalizer (sp?)
And I remember learning somewhere that if you allow about an hour per drink that you should be okay. Is that true?[/quote]
I think that they use the breathalizer, and that the limit is 0.25
On average a healthy male burns off one unit of alcohol in 75 minutes. However, individual metabolism can vary, so don’t bet your driver’s license on it.
Females burn it off slower.
Teh taxi advice is sound, but not very applicable in Yangmei, as there’s only a few around.
Two people I know were fined NT$110,000 and NT$140,000 respectively.
I know someone who was fined NT$60,000, but that person was also driving a motorcycle without a license and registration.
[quote=“Mr He”][quote=“braxtonhicks”]How do they determine if you’re drunk? Is there a test or breathalizer (sp?)
And I remember learning somewhere that if you allow about an hour per drink that you should be okay. Is that true?[/quote]
I think that they use the breathalizer, and that the limit is 0.25[/quote]
In Australia it’s 0.05 (hence the catchy jingle ‘be under 05, or under arrest’) so that sounds like a pretty impressive limit 
The rule of thumb I heard was I think three standard drinks in an hour, then one per hour thereafter is safe. However, you have to remember to adjust for body mass, food consumed, individual metabolism etc so it’s only very rough.
OK 0.025% then, which is hardly one beer.
There’s got to be some metric/English system difference. The legal limit in the States is either .10 or .08, depending on what state you’re in. I’m fairly sure that by the standard used in the States, .25 for most people would be somewhere between unable to stand up without assistance and passed out.
0.025 for chrissakes! Barely 1 beer ok?
Do they enforce this on people driving scooters and bicycles as well as people driving cars? Because nearly everybody down at the Armory and Western (the big foreigner hangouts in Tainan) on Saturday night, there are like a good 5 dozen scooters parked outside and people drive’em home, most of them pretty wasted. Driving drunk on motorscooters is a very, very common pasttime in Taiwan. Lots of people I know do it every weekend. Except for the hardcore alcoholics I know - those guys do it, like, four or five nights a week.
Not that I’m condoning drinking and driving, I’m just saying it’s extremely common around here.
What I have heard is that they enforce it on scooters - I don’t know about bicycles though.
God, I really hope that wasn’t my husband last year. :fume:
Edit: Got pulled over without license (yet) and reg but hadn’t been drinking. That’s pretty stupid on a big bike, isn’t it…
Interesting thread.
Here’s an online calculator that purports to take in most of the relevant variables. You can even choose Taiwan as your host country.
intox.com/wheel/drinkwheel.asp
Note: it appears to be an advertisement for a personal BAL tester, but the test seems to work ok anyway.
Christ, 0.025% is a very low threshold; according to some sources, drinking only gets fun at the 0.03% level!
Damn puritans.
They have overdone it here - but then earlier on this island was a drunken drivers paradise.
[quote=“flike”]Christ, 0.025% is a very low threshold; according to some sources, drinking only gets fun at the 0.03% level!
Damn puritans.[/quote]
True, it sounds extremely low to me - I thought Australia was tough. However, rather than them just being killjoys, could it be something to do with Asians being more affected by alcohol in general? (I’m not trying to be controversial - I thought this was scientific fact.) Thus a Taiwanese might be considered equally ‘impaired’ by alchohol at a lower BAL and the law’s designed for them, not for you uncivilised barbarians who can actually hold your liquor
I’m very tempted to say the lower level is also because you bloody well need all the concentration you can get just to drive ‘normally’ on the roads unscathed, but I doubt they took that into consideration 