No kids yet this time but a guy in Taoyuan is really not happy about an upcoming sidewalk project…
Just from a day or two ago.
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I think we should just start calling them something else in English because “sidewalk” misrepresents the meaning of the word in Chinese. I propose: “narrow path-obstructing multipurpose areas”.
Like the durian fruit stall I often see 1m from the zebra, making crossing the road more dangerous, as if crowded, some people have nowhere to go.
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Hence getting an SUV that can protect you when parked on the Zebra to grab some fruit quickly!
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Another left turning driver hits a pedestrian island flips their vehicle on its side. Also has a clip of a pedestrian on a sidewalk at the corner talking on the phone almost getting hit by a car as the driver loses control and veers into the corner of the intersection. Supposedly the driver’s blood sugar was too low. At least there’s a good excuse to get off the phone if you need one.
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The sad part is that the guy who hit the pedestrian island will probably blame the curb for this accident. If he just let oncoming traffic through the intersection, he would have plenty of space for the left turn.
A-pillar, low blood sugar, feeling uncomfortable, fight with his boyfriend, etc., etc…
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Last year a driver who was driving at speeds as high as 168km/h on Taichung’s expressway 74, where the speed limit is only 80km/h, and crashed into two vehicles which led to a 34 week pregnant woman to miscarry. The driver has now been given a 6 month sentence.
ChatGPT translation of article:
Outrageous! Audi Driver Speeding at 168 km/h Crashes into 2 Cars, Gets Light 6-Month Sentence – Pregnant Woman Loses Baby and Demands Justice: “Who Can Accept a 34-Week Fetus Being Treated as a ‘Thing’?”
Source: TTV News
Reporter: Tsao Kang-Yang
Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025, 9:30 PMIn Taichung, Taiwan, a man surnamed Chang was driving an Audi luxury car last May on the elevated Taichung Route 74 when he violated traffic laws and reached a speed of 168 km/h. He lost control and crashed into two other vehicles. One of them carried a woman surnamed Huang, who was 34 weeks pregnant. As a result of the crash, Huang’s car flipped three times, and her unborn baby tragically died in the womb due to a placental abruption. She had just returned from a prenatal checkup when the accident happened.
What has caused even more public outrage is the ruling from the Taichung District Court. In the first trial, the court sentenced Chang to just six months in prison, with the option to pay a NT$180,000 (approx. USD $5,600) fine to avoid jail time. Huang was devastated and furious, saying, “The court said the fetus was a ‘thing.’ Who can accept that? Who would be okay with that?”
The accident occurred on the night of May 3, 2024. Chang, 29, drove his Audi at a minimum of 122 km/h (the speed limit was 80 km/h), and at one point peaked at 168 km/h. After losing control, he crashed into a car driven by a man surnamed Lin, then rear-ended the car carrying Huang and her husband, causing it to flip three times and be wrecked beyond recognition.
Huang later filed charges against Chang for attempted murder. However, the prosecutors concluded that because Chang claimed his foot got stuck on the gas pedal after the impact, they could not prove intent to kill, and instead charged him with negligent injury — a crime carrying a maximum sentence of one year. The court considered the fact that Chang admitted guilt, worked in second-hand furniture earning NT$28,000/month, and supported his mother. Still, he had not apologized or offered compensation to the victims.
Huang, in an interview, said she could not accept the legal reasoning that classified her unborn child as merely an “object.” She emphasized that she had just heard the baby’s heartbeat before the accident — the baby was alive and real to her. Now, not only is she left grieving, but the man responsible has not even said sorry.
This case has sparked widespread anger and debate in Taiwan, especially regarding how unborn children are treated under the law in traffic accidents and criminal cases.
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There are lots of things that don’t make any sense here, but this part stood out.
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4 years old kindergarten children make better excuses! 
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Taiwan wants people to be more physically active.
Taiwan aims to boost physically active population 15% by 2030
Here are the 4 strategies the govt. outlined.
- Fostering a supportive social atmosphere
- Building an enabling environment
- Enhancing public awareness of self-managed health,
- and integrating information systems
I wonder if they understand that means building sidewalks, more bike paths, and people feeling safe enough to actually go out and walk and ride bikes…
Mother and son crossing the street almost hit by car turning left.
EPA garbage truck blows through a stop marking and scares a pregnant woman and her daughter that were standing there getting ready to cross. A nearby resident says at that location there many vehicle accidents. He has had the police come to his place many times to get CCTV footage. Unfortunately I’ve had a few less than pleasant experiences with a couple of garbage truck drivers. Had one run through a red light to make a U-turn…as I was in the crosswalk. The driver gave me a look of absolute disgust. Have had many in the later hours of the evening spend 10-20s constantly letting their foot up of the pedals to scoots forward…at a red light nearly rear ending me. They never look at our direction’s traffic light and instead look at the other direction’s light and then try to predict that you will fly off at 100000km/h so it’s okay for them to start moving early even though I want to wait an extra 0.2s after I get the green to quickly confirm that no one is going to blow through the red light and obliterate me to smithereens like so many accidents we see in Taiwan.
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Some joined up thinking required. I reported a motorcycle riding on the ramp up to a bridge from a riverside bike path recently, police responded that it wasn’t a sidewalk and therefore not under their jurisdiction.
I sent the statement only (none of the case details) to the Xindian police chief and asks for clarification that the Xindian Police policy was that motorcycles on riverside bicycle paths are outside their jurisdiction and they are unable/unwilling to issue tickets. What I got back surprised me…
Firstly the response included the registration and case number of the motorcycle I reported. I did not provide any of these details however did use the same email address so someone took it upon themselves to do a bit of snooping. The email to the chief was not sent through the reporting system.
Secondly they provided a fairly comprehensive report that was commissioned in March this year on the areas that they do not consider their jurisdication and/or have been instructed are not their jurisdiction. I haven’t taken the time to go through it yet but basically the riverside bike paths and the whole of the Bitan riverside park area are not theirs as far as policing motorcycles goes. I can only assume the report has come about due to someone appealing a fine given for riding there, I suspect some of the fine upstanding tatooed individuals that run hire businesses there and frequently ride scooters helmetless through the crowd at the weekend may be involved.
So, if you take the governments advice and go with your family and friends to enjoy walking and cycling on riverside bikepaths do take care not to get hit by a scooter as it’ll be up to you and the park service to deal with it, it’s not police business apparently.
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I was out running with a friend a few months ago. He was busy with some stuff earlier so we went out pretty late. We were mostly running along the bike/pedestrian path that runs along the train tracks. We ran over new pedestrian/bike bridge that was finished back in March or so that allows people to safely cross over HuanZhong Rd. After getting on the bridge we stopped because we saw a bright light on the same side as us…it was a damn scooter. I quickly grabbed my phone and recorded it because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I reported it and no fines were issued because the police couldn’t clearly see the plate…
Looks clear enough to me…ADN-9117
(I did have the date and time on the video, I just cropped them out for sharing them online)
Not the first time either on this path either. On other sections I’ve seen people turn off their motorcycle’s headlight at night to make themselves less noticeable and ride in on the path. I’ve seen it about a dozen different times. Really ridiculous.
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Do they have incentives to make the official numbers of traffic offences as low as possible?
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I’m not sure. Maybe it could be something as simple as just less reports meaning the area their precinct presides over is improving compared to previous years. Could just be the responding officer was tired and after a long day of looking at videos and pictures and was simply fatigued. They probably have to looking at a lot of garbage quality footage all throughout the day. The worst are the ones where the dashcams are barely working and there’s constant flickering…
I do recall before when the National Police Agency and MOTC agreed to remove various violations from being allowed to be reported due to the increasing work load on the officers it actually did nothing…as afterwards there was a significant increase in the police being called and asked to dispatch officers to deal with illegal parking or other violations that used to be open for public reporting. It got so bad that Taoyuan police said they would only respond to a call to an area once every two hours 
Also the number of public reports still increased a significant amount.
After they further restricted what we can report last year I’m not sure if the NPA has come out and said what the total numbers are like yet.
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An old excuse of theirs, very common when it’s something they couldn’t be arsed to deal with or feel the reported vehicle will complain. I blew up a numberplate photo to A3 size and sent it to them in response to one of their “it’s unclear when zoomed in” nonsense responses.
Yep, seen this one many times, it’s worse than just riding on the sidewalk it’s “I’m fully aware this is illegal and also aware there’s SFA you can do about it if I turn off my lights because I don’t give a f*ck about your or anyones elses safety as my convenience is all that matters”.
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WFT - I remember someone here getting the same sentence/fine for taking an OBike as their personal bike after the company stopped trading. Taiwan needs to seriously sort out how sentencing works.
I’ve seen this. I was cycling one evening on the riverside path and about to cross a small pedestrian bridge, just where the river between Gongguang and Xindian turns east to Jinmei. Just as I reached the bridge, out of nowhere, some old guy on a motorbike which I think didn’t have any lights on came ripping across it at what must have been sixty or seventy miles an hour. Maybe it was less, but it felt really fucking fast. Maybe three seconds between spotting him, screeching to a halt, and him flying past me and into the distance.
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