Loud exhausts are a safety feature. Understand that roads are dangerous. Use of mirrors, shoulder checks, and signal lights are very low here, drivers on average seem distracted. If my stock exhaust weren’t already loud enough, I would be open to getting something louder.
That said, riding gently with lower revs at night is the courteous thing to do. I was on the road after 1am recently and going through populated areas on quiet roads and did feel a bit bad about the noise. Still, better than being dead!
The road work…oh man don’t you love it when one side of the road is shutdown but it’s still open to traffic both ways and there’s no one to manage it, it’s every man for himself. Lots of crews that barely set any cones a safe distance out.
The one that scared me was coming down from Guguan area of Taichung after hiking and right before it got to a blind bend there was a crew setup on one side of the road cutting down some trees…well they had no one spotting or organizing traffic so my bus basically had to go around the bend completely blind and just kept honking his horn to try and alert other drivers…but man that was dangerous. It was funny seeing the lady on the crew keep trying to wave the bus driver through…she couldn’t see anything so she had no idea if it was safe to go…
From what I could tell I didn’t see any radios on them. The one for blind corner on the mountain road coming back down definitely not…because there was no one there besides the crew at the one spot and no one else before or past that area trying to direct traffic.
Taipei is not a car friendly city. anyone that drives knows that. It just happens that it also isnt a pedestrian friendly city either. But it is without a doubt the most pedestrian friendly city in this country!
Here’s a photo I took this afternoon, on Tong’an Road in Taoyuan District near a traditional market. This is a narrow two-lane road crammed with businesses on both sides. It’s even on a bus route. There is absolutely no place for pedestrians to walk, but happily the government painted one of those green “sidewalks” a couple of years ago.
your pic reminds me of sections of older style markets I drive now and then. i drive a truck, doing delivery so it’s a higher vehicle (3m). their umbrellas and roll out plastic verandas (forgot what those are called) stick into the road. I have seen countless trucks hit them, I have a few times as well. when I have hit them, only 1 vendor has ever apologized (broke my canopy) otherwise they yell at me for literally driving in the car lane and not taking up the whole road and oncoming traffic to avoid their shit invading the road lol. there is no car lane or sidewalks, they push them out into the actual roadway and have the balls (entitlement) to actually get angry with the cars driving legally and safely. jesus H…
But to be honest I care much more about all the killings here via poor driving than the older women that think everything revolves around them on the roadsides. But it’s all the same root cause of not being very smart and/or very selfish and entitled. not great. People die all the time. injured even more. loss of finances that much more. beyond ridiculous. Sadly, everyone here knows and laughs about it but wont risk losing face to improve until they are involved. myself included.
Taoyuan is the city that instituted the one cop dispatched per 2 hours to any area for illegal parking calls if I remember correctly.
Police complained they were too busy with the online reporting system, largely restrict the amount of violations that can be reported, and it’s reported in the news a few weeks later that they are swamped with calls about illegal parking and are just as busy.
Maybe some would fear retaliation of some sort (probably being sued, depending on the pic), but it’s more a respect thing than a fear thing I would think. Like someone’s face that is acting silly, I would hope people would blur that out too. A forum isnt the police station.
PS. I have been told by social workers that it is not ok to record people and post online (we were talking of audio, video and photos). can only be used in court, with police etc. Not sure if that includes car license plates. but it seems possibly grey enough to play it safe.
I mostly did it to protect the scooter owners from potential cyber vigilantes.
Maybe you remember the case from a few years ago of a young guy who cussed out and threatened an older bus driver in Taipei. Of course he was in the wrong, but internet justice seekers went too far. They doxed the guy’s girlfriend and folks showed up at her place of business and caused undue problems for her.
First time I’ve seen police officers near where I live enforcing the red line for illegal parking. A car was parked on the red line and they blared their sirens but no one was in the car so they got out and started taking pictures and writing a ticket. According to one of the ladies in my community they’ve been going around, at least near our area, and clearing out some of the illegally parked cars. It sure is nice having the extra space and drivers can see pedestrians a lot easier.
Ironically enough the police parked on both crosswalks and inhibited the safe crossing of a couple of pedestrians…there were plenty of other places they could’ve parked their vehicle.
