I feel like at this point it’s not a bug it’s a feature. Hire some biased asshole that is mediocre and have him take the blame while not actually push for any substantial change because as long as the representative’s constituents are happy with their cars, things will never change
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It’s both funny and sad. Police officers ignore multiple illegally parked vehicles AND blow through a stop sign.
Don’t worry, surely the next step is the Highway Bureau will eventually require you to stop, point and verbally confirm no pedestrian left, no pedestrian right, when making turns on the motorcycle test.
The funny thing is…if it’s actually implemented and drivers doing their test are supposed to stop when coming up to the crosswalk we’ll probably see an increasing number of these driving schools having their car plates suspended as suddenly stopping like that for no reason (i.e. no pedestrians crossing or getting ready to cross) is considering dangerous driving and will result in a 6 month license plate suspension of the report passes or a police officer comes up on such a driver and writes a ticket.
A few days ago I was by the Chongde MRT station in Taichung and I was really surprised…I saw a car driver completely ignore the traffic guard and almost hit a few pedestrians when making a right turn. The way this side of the intersection works is the right turn gets the green light first, before pedestrians and then the pedestrian crossing will turn green after about 20s or so. I think it’s super easy to navigate as it’s really easy to see the pedestrians and the crossing signal. Well the car driver just forced his way through in front of pedestrians crossing even with the crossing guard furiously blowing his whistle and walking up to the vehicle.
Guess which intersection has tech. enforcement for not yielding to pedestrians…yup this one. Oh and also saw about 30-40 scooters go straight from the right turn lane so that’s a nice chunk of money for the city there too thanks to the cameras.
Two stage turns for motorcycles are super dangerous at these kind of intersections as you are supposed to move into the box from the straight lane…which means you have a very high chance of getting hit by someone going straight in the right turn lane. If I have to make a left turn at such an intersection I will just keep going straight and loop all the way around at the next intersection rather than take the chance…
Safest left turn method, a protected left turn with no pedestrians crossing is super dangerous in Taiwan if you have 2 wheels…
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Hey, I went along there on Friday night! That’s the combo sidewalk/bicycle lane there on the right. I happened to stand just about where this picture is (on the sidewalk, obviously!) and take a photo of the opposite direction, at perhaps just before 19:00. Here it is:
Perhaps four or five food trucks parked along the sidewalk/bicycle lane. Good job, Taichung!
Edit: I’m sorry, I’m so familiar with this road that I forgot to mention that it’s got 100% coverage of these no-stopping signs, every few dozens of meters:
(I took that photo at the next station along, on Thursday.)
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Everyone best be prepared to get screwed over again as a Professional Driver’s Union will be protesting again. To remind everyone, the whole reason points were removed from public traffic violation reports (which have to be approved by a police officer) and traffic cameras, was because of professional driver’s unions and taxi unions protesting at the MOTC…within a day the MOTC bent over backward for them…
They are protesting because the increase in the MINIMUM fine for hitting and seriously injuring or killing a pedestrian which changed the fine to a flat fine of NT$36,000, which was previously the maximum.
They are calling for pedestrians who illegally cross to have the fine changed from NT$500 to NT$18,000…which is more than the minimum fine for dangerous driving which would result in an immediate 6 month license plate suspension…
Also complain that traffic policy unfairly target drivers…
ChatGPT Translation of Professional Driver’s Union post:
【0519 Joint Statement by Professional Drivers’ Groups】
To: Minister of Transportation
The Taiwan National Automobile Drivers’ Rights Alliance issues a solemn joint statement!
#An incompetent Ministry of Transportation only knows how to fine without providing supporting measures?
#Are you treating the public like an ATM?
#We urge all road users and drivers to protest against the Minister’s incompetence!
#The Taiwan National Automobile Drivers’ Rights Alliance issues the following serious statement:We call for a balanced implementation of the “3E Policy”: Engineering, Education, and Enforcement!
Statement 1: Current traffic policies violate the principle of proportionality and unfairly target “drivers” as a group.
Statement 2: We recommend increasing the fine for “pedestrians running red lights” to NT$18,000, to serve as a deterrent.
Statement 3: Strengthen police presence at key intersections to strictly enforce penalties against jaywalking pedestrians.
Statement 4: Improve education and clearly mark penalties for pedestrians who violate crossing rules or run red lights.
Statement 5: Fully implement and improve traffic signal systems for pedestrian-vehicle separation, especially in urban areas to resolve pedestrian-vehicle conflicts.We urge the Minister of Transportation to take these recommendations seriously and immediately convene a public hearing with relevant groups.
“Bad policy is worse than corruption!”
May 19th – Join Us!
- Assembly Time: 09:30 AM at Hangzhou South Road (beside Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall)
- March Start Time: 10:00 AM
Route: Hangzhou South Road → Aiguo East Road → Zhongshan South Road → Xinyi Road Sec. 1 → back to Hangzhou South Road → protest in front of the Ministry of Transportation- Press Conference: 10:30 AM
Transportation Routes:
- Taxi Convoy: Ren’ai Road Sec. 1 → Shaoxing South Street → Xinyi Road Sec. 1 → Hangzhou South Road
- Tour Bus Convoy: Ren’ai Road Sec. 1 → Linsen South Road → Xinyi Road Sec. 1 → Hangzhou South Road
End Time: End of the petition event
Joint Statement by Professional Driver Groups:
- Taiwan National Automobile Drivers’ Rights Alliance
Chairperson: Liu Hong-Zhang 090-3399-438- New Taipei City Tour Bus Drivers’ Trade Union
Chairperson: Hsu Ching-Hsiang 091-6116-503- Taiwan Tour Bus Development Association
Chairperson: Lee Shih-Chia
[Link to National Car Right’s Association facebook post]
As a reminder one Taichung Professional Driver’s Union a year or two ago was even going to bring up removing the penalties for drunk driving. The memo got leaked and the union quickly responded by saying it wasn’t something they were actually going to bring up and was only proposed by someone during internal discussion and wasn’t meant to be brought up as a real proposal to the govt…
Some more positive news. Yongkang st. in Taipei to be turned into a pedestrian zone on weekends from 2pm to 8pm which will close the street to most vehicles.
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Statement 5 seems to be the only thing with merit to it.
As a response to the others the fines for those getting paid to drive (I cannot call them professional drivers!) should be doubled or trippled given their apparently concern and keen awareness of the traffic rules.
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Apologies, the quoted part should be traffic policies* not traffic police. My fault for the typo. When thinking about professional drivers I often see them illegally parking and then illegally running across the street to get their lunch…this seems like it would ultimately just be them slapping themselves in the face.
In Zhongli the highway bureau moved the two stage turn box from being in the road to being on the sidewalk leaving pedestrians little to no space to pass by.
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It only took until 2025 for the 4th coolest street in the world to be pedestrian. Only on weekends evenings. Everyone knows cool kids go home past 8pm.
A Guide to Yongkang Street - The 4th Coolest Street in the World! - Taipei Travel Geek.
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Taiwan govt. watchdog asking foreigners to take do anonymous questionnaire regarding road traffic safety in Taiwan as casualties involving foreign nationals have doubled the past 5 years. You can submit a response up until May 23rd. It’s a Google Forms link for the questionnaire. Remember to share with your friends and family so they can give a response as well!
Languages and their links here: English, Chinese, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese and Thai
“To gain a deeper understanding of the transportation challenges faced by foreigners in Taiwan, Control Yuan Member Yeh Ta-hua has launched a multilingual questionnaire inviting foreign residents to share their experiences and suggestions,” the statement said.
English article from Taiwan News regarding window tinting:
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I love how in English survey, the picture of traffic sign already have a spelling mistake
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I think it was a deliberate choice as the image source links an article which says even elementary school kids are laughing at the terrible English on the traffic signs.
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Just saw this. Govt. website “Dr. Street” is the platform previously used when people voted on areas that needed improvements to pedestrian environment the most. It’s open now for voting again. You can vote for up to 5 places per week.
To vote you have to create an account. The website is only in Chinese. You can also use your Line account to login. On the bottom right click the big blue button with the “GO” on it to go to the page to vote. On the map you can see places people have already marked and also cast a vote for that location. If you wish to add a location yourself you can click the bottom circular bottom on the bottom left of the map screen and then click on the road section and cast a vote for that section which will then be marked for everyone else to see and vote for as well.
Voting ends May 18th so hurry up and register to vote. My understanding is the top rated places will be given priority for improvement projects and subsidies for said projects.
EDIT:
Dang…most of the votes are for Taichung…thousands of votes for many sections while in other cities maybe only a couple hundred..
It even got in the news…of the top 10 places so far across the entire country Taichung has 8 roads listed. Only 1 place in an entire city/county for a project will receive central govt. subsidies based on the voting on this platform…
City Councillor Lin Haoyou says Taichung residents are dissatisfied with the pedestrian environment in Taichung and have taken online to vote and voice their dissatisfaction.
Taichung Head of Construction Bureau says they will work hard to make improvements to other locations..
Don’t worry though, Taichung is already working on another large section of road for widening/renovating an existing sidewalk. They will make sure it is as least 3m. wide so motorcycles can legally park there thanks to Taichung city’s special rule. Don’t worry though, a ton of cars will park here just like other places that have these projects.
Local news report about the new window tint regulations/news from this week. Same as previously posted but just a local news report if you want to share with friends. Car detail shop says almost everyone uses tints with light transmittance of only 35% and he it talking only about the film itself, not the light transmittance after installation. Obviously 35% is well below the 70% standard that is supposed to come into effect next year for the front windshield.
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Some local residents in Kaoshiung just can’t understand how a sidewalk can be wider than the road and complain about it. Due to the extreme width of the road that was only 1 lane each way the govt. was easily able to add in a “sidewalk” while still having plenty of room leftover for parking bays.
After:
Before:
Side-by-side:
And it’s even still wide enough to filter through if you’re on a bike/motorcycle or have some wiggle room for when people are moving over to park:
Also saw this shared online. Apparently it’s a brand new sidewalk…
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My taiwanese coworker looked at it and said he see nothing wrong with it
And then I pointed out at the middle obstruction and he was like "oh yeah that one, just move from the side "
Then I said what about wheelchair users and then he was like “oh yeah I guess it’s a problem”
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Indeed.
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Green paint is not a wall, I still do not understand, how can they call this sidewalk, it does not prevent anyone at all from riding there anyway unless there are too many cars and scooters parking there.
The bottleneck where only one slim person can walk through and person on a wheelchair is out of luck is also “amazing.”
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Taiwan in a nutshell 
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Major traffic accident in Hualian. Drivers slams into a breakfast shop on the corner and into people sitting inside. 13 people injured. No sidewalks and of course no bollards. Not only do you have to be wary when outside, but also inside…
Currently it’s suspected that the accident occurred due to the driver being mentally fatigued.
Somehow no one is in life threatening condition.
Video of the shop’s CCTV footage showing more of the crash. Victims/injured blurred out, but you can see that the vehicle came flying in…
Some YouTubers show how bad the pedestrian environment is. Video is in Chinese but even if you can’t understand I think most of it is pretty self-explanatory for just how ridiculous things are.
The YouTube channel is the one I shared before where they took a bunch of students on a 300km. walk across Taiwan and encountered an incredibly large amount of ridiculous situations.
Don’t worry though, the video features Taichung, the city that is so proud to say it has a better pedestrian environment than Tokyo 
One of them barrows a wheelchair to show just how bad it is…even if you have a sidewalk. Video features YouTuber OwlFuko who some people may know given his numerous videos on pedestrian and traffic safety in Taiwan. The video starts off showing you have a massive 10 lane road and pedestrians only have 25s to cross and there are no pedestrian islands or anywhere safe to stand if you can’t make it across.
They also show a confusing intersection with no crossing signals which makes it very difficult for pedestrians to understand when they are allowed to cross the crosswalk. If they get confused and see that one side of traffic has stopped and no traffic is driving straight into their path and the other side road that is also “straight” has no traffic a pedestrian could easily believe they are allowed to cross…then you could have traffic suddenly flying through at 60-70 and kill a pedestrian because Taichung still has so many large/massive intersections or confusing intersections with no crossing signals.
They also show another wide road with a sidewalk that suddenly ends. Also has tons of crap on it so it is useless even for able bodied people. The trees planted on the sidewalk also take up a lot of space and they were not able to pass through with the wheelchair. From a measurement they took the single traffic lane there is 4.6m wide…massive. Also a 1.7m shoulder. Obviously could easily adjust it by making the lane narrower and having widened sidewalk and you could still easily have parking bays.
Of course they also talk about qilou/arcades…what more needs to be said. Most of them are terrible, uneven and often blocked off anyways. Good luck if you’re in a wheelchair or have other mobility issues.
The last part they look at a 4 way overhead bridge crossing intersection that has no crosswalks. For the guy in the wheelchair it took him about 12min. to go around and get to the other side. The YouTuber OwlFuko brings up an important point…you can’t just improve things by changing 1 intersection at a time. This way you would need a couple hundreds years to fix things. It’s a systematic issues. You need to have proper standardized design regulations and actually follow them.
He also shares his experience with the MOTC. As he is involved in various groups, such as Pedestrian Rights, Motorcycle Rights, etc. pushing for improved safety for pedestrians and safer designs for pedestrians and traffic as well as designs that would naturally slow traffic, stricter training and licensing programs for cars and motorcycles, etc, etc. so he has often met with the MOTC and joined in on meetings. He shares in his experience the MOTC may invite you for a meeting but it’s not actually for discussion. It’s just for them to tell you something they already decided by themselves and they don’t actually care about these group’s opinions.
Here’s their previous video with the kids walking across Taiwan if you didn’t see it yet.
At a Pingtung sports center the handicapped parking for motorcycles is on the sidewalk. Well actually all the motorcycle parking is on the sidewalk. By law you are supposed push your motorcycle on the sidewalk but obviously no one does that. Generally speaking shouldn’t even have motorcycle parking on the sidewalk anyways. For this news story the main issue is that for people that need the handicapped parking for motorcycles…they typically cannot push their vehicle at all…so they are forced to commit a traffic violation.
As a solution I believe the best way to go about improving acccessibility for everyone is to break the legs of every single person the MOTC, Transportation Departments, and Construction Burea so they realize how stupid the roads and sidewalks they design and build are…or maybe at least put in just a little bit of thought about the needs of anyone besides a professional parkour athlete.
Taichung bridge is in the news, again, for still not having any way to get down on one side, so you can walking for 10 minutes and get to the end and find out there is nowhere to go and have to walk all the way back. There used to be a staircase but it was removed. Apparently some issue with private property. Still the city govt. refuses to find any solution and just puts up a sign telling people to walk back and go on the other side. The Beitun Engineering Dept. official who responded to the news said we have put up a sign so just walk on the other side.
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Is no where safe? Only in Taiwan would “mentally fatigued” be considered any sort of excuse for this fuckery, in their mind neatly dissolves any responsibility from the government though!
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Don’t worry. The professional driver’s union is out protesting today at the MOTC, calling for an NT$18,000 fine for pedestrians who illegally cross.
As a reminder the fine for running a red light with a car NT$1,800-5,400 (except for turning right which is cheaper). That means you can run a red light up to 10 times (going off the minimum) before you match the fine. For running a red light and turning right it is only NT$600-1,800, meaning you can run a red light 30 times (going off the minimum), yes 30 times before you match a pedestrian illegally crossing once under their proposal.
You can illegally park on the crosswalk 30 times and before you match the fine for illegally crossing, which by the way if I remember correctly, crossing against a red for a pedestrian signal and illegally crossing are the under the same law, so any amendment would mean failing to cross on the crosswalk, when one is present, is illegal. So by MOTC approved measure to tell police to not give any tickets to illegally parked taxis, delivery trucks, etc. parked on corners and crosswalks, pedestrians are thus forced to illegally cross the street as they are first stepping onto the road and not the crosswalk, even with a green signal for the crossing.
EDIT: Pedestrian and traffic safety advocate and YouTuber OwlFuko also uploaded his own video from his colab with YouTuber mdddj which I shared above showing how poor the pedestrian environment is. In his video he mostly just gives a quick overview and then mostly focues on some design improvements and suggestions and draws them up so you can easily see that in fact, there is plenty of space to make significant improvements.
Since the videos have been about Taichung, here’s a video Taichung Transportation dept. has uploaded today. Wrist/arm bands that light up. Letting elderly know they can wear such things and safely go out and come home. Also reminded people when going out in the morning or night to wear bright clothes.
Huh maybe they should just REGULATE THE DAMN WINDOW TINTS or push the MOTC to have better than super basic “international standards” or at least make the regulations apply to all vehicles, no exceptions except for a grace period.
This is mostly a gripe I have with the MOTC, rather than Taichung, but when you put it all together it just ends up being frustrating since this is a super basic measure the MOTC can implement.
On Facebook this is my favorite comment on their post:
現在行人都要自己發光才能上路了嗎
“Now pedestrians have to light up before they can go onto the road?”
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Too much reminds me of 19th century circus… 
I think this advice might kill even more people, since some might get the false feeling of safety…
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