Hazards and High Beams

Two things have been annoying the hell out of me recently.

  1. Many people put on their hazard lights when they are braking. This happens mostly on the highways, but I have noticed people are doing it more now on normal roads. Normal braking, flashers go on. Why? In the US, people don’t do this. Is it common in other countries?

  2. High beams on all of the time. THIS really gets under my skin. People here do not know how to use their lights! You either get no lights at all, just parking lights or people with their high beams on. Why?

Let’s not run before we can walk. Getting people to correctly use indicators (turning signals) would be a start.

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I have only seen people use their hazards when braking on the highway to warn cars behind them that there is a sudden standstill of traffic on the highway.

High beams annoy the shit out of me too, yesterday a bus had his on and it was pure hell.

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Me too. Before, I only saw it happening on highways when people had to brake hard or suddenly. That makes sense. But this past week, I have seen it happening on normal city streets. Odd.

A friend, who knows a cop, says that it is illegal to flash your high beams to alert the other driver that their high beams are on. I do it anyways, usually tap my horn once or twice with a friendly tap and then flash my beams. He said that is running a risk of getting the crap beat out of me. Seriously?

Yeah I am not so sure about that, I do friendly honks when people are prob texting at red lights that turn green and take 5 seconds to pull away.

I only flash people sometimes to let them know I am coming through and they must not turn.

That is prob the most annoyed I get, is when people turn in front of me and I have to basically stop in the middle of the street, and what gets me the most is if I am driving the speed limit, but some dickhead taxi or car wants to pass me and will keep honking and flashing his lights for me to speed up so he can race past me. No buddy, I will drive the speed limit and so will you because that is what it’s there for.

Also, people often don’t switch their lights on when it’s getting darker or during rain, in the mountains etc. There is simply a lack of awareness, education (at least when compared to Western countries.

One of my pet peeves. Why is it that car manufacturers spend so much efforts on automatizing cars, but a simple function like turning lights automatically on when it’s getting dark or at least letting the driver know that he should switch on the lights has not been implemented?

I agree this would be a nice feature to have on all cars. But I also think the more we “dumb things down”, the worse drivers will become.

What I fail to understand is how can people not know? I regularly see drivers who have failed to turn their headlights on, or who have forgotten to turn off their indicator after turning. How can they not realise?

Sometimes it’s just them being oblivious to their surroundings and sometimes, you just forget!

I’ve been on the road for 3.5+ years now in Taiwan and there’s probably been a couple of times where I have forgotten to turn on my headlights and my blinkers. Sometimes it’s just due to being exhausted from work or not getting enough sleep. It happens.

Also, let’s be honest, if you’re in Taipei, you don’t really need headlights to see what’s in front of you.

On the other hand, some locals are just not meant to be on the road. The sheer fact that they are on the road has gotten them in a state of shock that they notice nothing, but what’s in front of them. It’s just tunnel vision kind of thinking (or sight in this instance) that unfortunately is noticeable in other aspects of Taiwanese culture.

This leads me to another question…
Reflective Botts’ Dots.
botts-dots-lanes

They are not used on surface streets. Only on highways. And even the highways have stretches of road that don’t have them. It makes driving at night difficult and driving in the rain at night almost impossible!

There have been many occasions when I have been driving at night during a rain storm and the street lighting is so poor that you just can’t see the lanes. Having reflective Botts Dots on all surface streets that have more than one lane would be a smart.

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About the hazard lights: anything that helps to signal intention is fine with me. In Canada, I learned that this means one is about to slow down or stop. If it’s catching on here, great.

The highbeams on the other hand drive me nuts. Folks do not seem to understand the problems they cause. They seem genuinely clueless that they are in fact endangering themselves as well as others!

Guy

Not only that, some leave their rear fog light on all the time too.

I hate that everyone feels the need to back into parking spots. How do you get the giant items from Costco into the trunk if you’ve backed in? One time in a shopping mall, I got a nasty gram on my car from security for not backing into a regular spot saying something about safety.

Wow - I didn’t know this was a thing. (I don’t drive a car in Taiwan.) What odd priorities for safety. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me.

On cars: so do new cars not automatically have headlights on? I believe that’s been the case in Canada for many years now. At least it’s been many years since any helpful souls have tried to turn off my scooter headlight during the day.

I believe so.

My Gogoro2+ has head lights permanently turned on. Shit eats up my battery and lowers my mileage! :smile:

I’ve had this, too. Friends remind me instantly that my lights are on!

I live in the hills of Pingtung County where its pitch black at night. Long stretches of my ride home have no street lighting. The amount of old guys riding around with no headlight and a CD taped over the rear light as a reflector does my head in. Headlights are a frivolously modern contraption to some apparently.

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Some car driver in the opposing lane is flashing the headlights twice. What intention does he signal? In Germany, it means “Go ahead, I let you in” (when you are going to make a left turn and the traffic in his lane is grinding to a hold anyway for example). In Taiwan, I am not sure, but I feel it’s more like “Get the f out of my way! I am not f-ing giving you an inch of space, even if it doesn’t not make a difference to me whatsoever.”

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Unfortunately, I don’t think this vocabulary exists yet, at least not in northern Taiwan.

When people are not being total dicks, I do like trying to be gracious though. When this happens, folks look pleasantly surprised! :smiley:

Guy

I’ve gotten numerous notes on my windshield too for not backing in.

I’ve been told by locals that it is preferred to back in because it is safer when pulling out. Considering that in Taiwan during driving school and testing they are not taught to actually look over their shoulder when reversing, instead only relying on mirrors, I can see how backing out would be dangerous.

Places like Costco…it makes zero sense. So I just pull in forward and watch the idiots try to load their trunks with absolutely no room to get into their trunks.

People here flash high beams mostly to signal you to get the hell out of their way so they can pass you. On occasion I have seen people flash high beams to say thank you when yielding on narrow streets. But for that they mostly double tap honk.

A Taiwanese friend insists that it is OK and wise to drive at night with just the parking lights on. He says they don’t call them parking lights. They call them city night lights. Says it saves energy costs using them and in they city it’s bright enough that you don’t need the normal headlights. According to him, normal headlights are for the highway and darker roads. He says high beams are for people who don’t see well at night.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one example of the type of drivers out there. Blows my mind.

Be safe out there and watch out for idiots.

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