She probably was in a normal state of mind. Worst case scenario she hits your family and then you get the usual “blind spot” “a pillar”.
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Something else that, in my opinion, contributes to accidents is the speed at which pedestrians cross streets. Even if the pedestrians have the right of way, I often see them running across and the result is that the drivers don’t really need to slow down (that’s assuming they’re actually paying attention.)
When crossing I make eye contact with anyone driving my way and walk at an even pace. I’ll also sometimes point my finger at them and that always gets their attention. Last month, on my way home from work in the evening, I was crossing a busy intersection and a woman was making a left turn while blabbing on the phone. I stopped and pointed my finger at her and yelled in chinese that she could do that. She panicked and dropped her phone denying she’d been using it. I took out my phone and pretended to start recording her and she quickly hid it. She was embarrassed. Other people saw it happen and they also knew she’d been on her phone. Shame people. That seems to be one of the only things that we, as foreigners, can do. I did it with a woman and her kid who was riding on the sidewalk. Another was riding with 2 kids and all 3 had no helmets. I said to her, “don’t you care about your kids?” “Blablabla…my helmet is under the seat.”. There were over a dozen people around her. As I said, shame them.
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Probably because they beeped at them, so you know, wasn’t totally their fault. Or some other shit logic like that.
The building must be at least 15 years old. There has been a PX Mart there since at least 5 years. It took them all these years to realize that they need this area of the sidewalk (always packed with scooters) to unload goods. Because I’m pretty sure pedestrians haven’t crossed their minds.
That day I saw a policeman handling the removal of several illegally sidewalk parked scooters nearby (this photo). A car didn’t yield in the zebra crossing to me and my kid in her stroller. I raised my hand (the police saw it) and pointed to the car. With a body language that clearly was showing I was mafang him, he reached the driver’s window and tapped it. It took quite a few seconds for the driver to lower the window, after a few words exchange, the driver was cleared to go. I was already on my way, but I raised again my hand in despair while saying no with my head.
To the driver’s credit, the truck the police was using to take the scooters away was parked just in front of the zebra.
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Delivery truck drives straight into pedestrian. He got hit with the max fine of 3,600NTD. Driver blames the A pillar.
Pedestrian is hit by a car when crossing. First car doesn’t yield, 2nd car drives right into the pedestrian, hitting him and sent him flying 3m away. Driver blames the A pillar.
Many scooters and cars do not want to stop behind a car that is yielding for a pedestrian and immediately start going around the vehicle…this kind of behavior is a big problem…oh someone stopped in front of me, let me go around and completely ignore the possibility that in front there is an accident or someone crossing.
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Why don’t they cancel the driver license? They don’t have points system in Taiwan? My poor country put smart cameras everywhere in the capital with point system. Nobody is fucking around anymore, they are literally everywhere checking red light and speed.
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I find that pretty common when the car has stopped in the scooter area at the lights. And with taxis.
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The situation is not helped by the habit here of randomly stopping wherever the hell people want to stop . . .
Guy
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Average Taiwanese: Being called “pedestrian hell” on CNN is so embarrassing…
Also average Taiwanese: … but I still won’t stop driving like a bat outta hell over the few sidewalks in my neighborhood.
They’re aware of the problem, and some even superficially care due to loss of face if nothing else, but they still don’t care enough to do anything about it. In twenty years, there might be a few more perfunctory stripes of green paint on some streets, but there will still be scooters driving on sidewalks and blue trucks and buses nailing pedestrians on crosswalks.
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From my memory, which is hazy, they don’t teach any of this in the testing centre prior to the scooter test. Like take care of pedestrians, don’t drive on pavements, don’t go around other cars. It’s pretty pathetic .
Mostly they just focus on how to not get killed by buses and trucks. You get to see an hour of videos of horrible accidents and things not to do.
So it’s the Ministry of Transportation’s fault for not educating people in the first place…These days I try to keep my sanity by pretending I didn’t see somebody whizzing by me ignorantly, just to stop my blood pressure rising.
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When my 75 year old Dad would visit, he would shake his fist and scream expletives like Captain Haddock at every driver who did this. My wife would be partly embarrassed and partly worried one of the drivers would be a gangster and come back with a tire iron. I found the whole thing kind of amusing.
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The other reason I don’t do it as much, it only takes one time.
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Yeah, true, and in Kaohsiung it’s probably more likely than in Taipei… but my wife thinks everyone is a potential gangster lol. I figure he’s 75, he’s earned the right to mouth off. The one time I told him to try to control himself or that old “when in Rome” cliche, he waved me off.
The other day I saw two cars stopped in one of the center lanes of a 4 lane freeway after a minor fender bender. Both drivers were out of their vehicles yelling at each other while traffic zoomed by at 100kph within inches.
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The education seems to be sorely lacking based on what some other forum members have shared.
Taichung is also entering a period of “strict” enforcement of yielding to pedestrians from March 13 to the 26th… Significantly shorter than other cities even though we’ve had some pretty serious incidents here.
Pedestrians sucumbs to injuries from being hit by a vehicle while crossing the street in Taipei.
Delivery truck suspected of speeding loses controls and smashes into a college student, killing him, and almost hitting another student who barely avoided getting hit.
A car suddenly makes a left turn at an intersection. Scooter driver has no time to react and dies in the accident. His young son on the back of the scooter got a bone fracture.
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In just 4 days Taichung’s 4th Precent/Branch police office has earned over 900,000ntd in fines.
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A shame they don’t have enough officers to go after all traffic offenses, where would they ever find the money?!
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Imagine if they actually did their jobs all the time!
Guy
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Shared online by some local Facebook pages. Apparently the illegal parking on this so-called sidewalk was close to City Hall in Chiayi.
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Perfect example of a place where I would jaywalk to the safety of the non-green sidewalk.
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