Not sure what the goal of changing the crosswalk…but it’s impressive how they try their best to make things worse.
Here’s a video with a police officer issuing a fine to a scooter who didn’t yield to pedestrians, came within in 3 meters of their backside. Now when he enforces the law tons of people are complaining about it.
Here in Taipei a pedestrian was very close to being hit. If he didn’t jump out of the way he would have been hit pretty good. But don’t worry the pedestrian already passed, the car came from behind, should be no ticket~
Debatable whether Taiwanese consider it a face loss at this point, these pedestrian hell news stories have been piling up for months and yet no sign of anything meaningful being done about it. Its a disgrace.
If they really need to drive then they’re going to drive no matter what.
I knew it would go down like this. It’s such an on the fence way to go about things.
Just make it clear, no cars allowed to cross at the same time as pedestrians. Job done, no enforcement campaigns needed. No farting around, everyone who crosses at this time just gets fined. Problem solved instantly. Why can’t they do this? They just make more work for themselves and solve nothing.
This isn’t a realistic rule. It doesn’t make sense to just stop in the middle of the intersection to yield to pedestrians who are super far away from you.
The three-meter rule is fine.
The rider in the video was fined for failing to slow down at the crosswalk.
The 3 meter rule I feel is pretty clear too. That’s what the crosswalk markings are for. It can’t be that hard for people to figure out how much 3 meters is.
Convenience vs Safety. Convenience will win every time. There is no way that Taiwan traffic will become significantly safer if the general public views the encroachment on their convenience is too high.
While this topic deals with yielding to pedestrians…I need to use another example to illustrate. Why are motorcycles allowed to swerve in and out between moving cars? Why does a car have to be super careful to not hit the motorcycles traveling at high speeds on the left and right sides of his moving vehicle? Well, there is no way anyone is going to take away the convenience of the anything goes methodology of driving a motorcycle as that would impede on convenience. All the non-enforcement of traffic violations boils down to convenience…and a high tolerance of danger since only your fate not actions causes accidents.
I just hit a car with my toddler’s bicycle wheel. A car that did not yield to a family to just have to stop at the next red light literally 10 meters away from our crosswalk.
Another pedestrian behind us scolded ME. I waved my hand in a disdainful way.
What I really wanted was to hit his face with the wheel too.
A really bizarre incident in Nantou, car drives across the road and drives straight into a scooter which bursts into flames and kills the scooter rider. The driver was not drunk and told police she didn’t know why she crossed the road…
This makes total sense because I see people driving like this all the time. Just a few weeks ago I saw a cyclist slam into another cyclist coming from the opposite direction. It was the most bizarre thing I’d seen in years. It happened right in front of me and I said to her “WTF did you just do? Didn’t you see the other person?” And she said she did and then gave me some sort of weird spaced out look.
Yesterday I saw some knucklehead stop in front of a beetlenut store. Instead of pulling up to the side of the road, he just stopped in the middle of it. Not a worry in the world. Then there’s the moron who just pulled onto the sidewalk to park his car while the wife ran into a pharmacy. I asked him why he parked on the side walk blocking pedestrians and his response was, “oh, I’m not from around here.” I took out my phone, he panicked, and backed up into the intersection, then cut across the zebra path with oncoming traffic. All makes total sense.
In some instances, people are completely unaware of the problem and don’t understand why someone might be upset. In most of those cases I’m assuming that they’re from down south/the country side and have spent a lifetime doing this without any problem. In other instances, people know that what they’re doing is not right. These are the ones who, as soon as you take out your phone, panic and take off. They know what’s up and don’t want to pay a fine. 95% of the time when I take out my phone, they take off. If everyone starts doing this, we can make a difference (both foreigners and locals).
Fell asleep?
Not to blame the victim, but didnt the scooter driver notice?
I hope this is partially related to the streamer.
Playing in the phone ?
Don’t talk nonsense, its the norm for many countries. I have no idea why ‘turning on crossing’ is even a thing anywhere, let alone in Taiwan where drivers really can’t be trusted with the responsibility of it.
I mean this enforcement move is great and all, but 3600nt fine is hardly something most car drivers care about.
Why can’t there be say a way to temporarily suspend the license of repeat offenders until they attend reeducation courses on common road use courtesy?
Like being a top down society you’d think people in power can do lots about this.
If it is shows how only shame pushes authorities to do something here. If a person dies on road hit by a car?
“meh fine no problem. Lets say sorry”
if a tourist cant cross a road and show it on youtube to whole world?
“we must take action or we will get bad reputation”
The sad part is…they don’t even really try to take action even when being embarrassed, just do policing duties for traffic for a few days than back to usual, it’s just “SOP” at this point. There is no shame, no care for the lifelong injuries (and the medical costs), the pain, the suffering, and the death.
Also with the aging population…I expect things to continue to get worse or have little improvement at best until the govt. and more people here actually start to care.
Wouldn’t all this traffic accident be a burden onto the NHI? This alone should be reason enough to reduce traffic accidents.