The crisis of road safety: Experts say Taiwan’s roads are lethal
Every day, the news is full of shocking stories of traffic accidents. Occasionally, a heartbreaking story will attract special attention. But in general, we often take for granted the number of fatal accidents on Taiwan’s roads. Today, we want to ask, if that should change. Traffic accidents are getting more and more frequent, but other countries don’t have roads as deadly as Taiwan’s. Campaigners are calling for laws to change, and better road safety education in schools. Just why are Taiwan’s roads so dangerous? Here’s part one of our two-part series, The Crisis of Road Safety.
Mrs. Juan
Mother of traffic accident victim
We don’t live here anymore. This is his old room. We’ve kept it exactly the same as it was.
This room once belonged to Juan Sheng-hsiang. It’s like time stands still here. Everything has been left untouched, from the awards he’s received over the years to his toys and treasured photographs. Even his familiar orange jacket still hangs on the back of the chair.
Mrs. Juan
Mother of traffic accident victim
This is him as a baby. We haven’t moved his things.
Photos of the family celebrating happy times sit on the bookshelves. But Mrs. Juan is marking the seventh anniversary of Sheng-hsiang’s death.
Mrs. Juan
Mother of traffic accident victim
He was so good-hearted. He never went through a rebellious phase. He was so tall, taller than me. He was big and strong as a kid, too, and he would be scared if I got angry. For example, when I had to tell him off, one time he had done something naughty, and I couldn’t smack him. He knelt down on the ground telling me to spank him.
In Mrs. Juan’s memory, Sheng-hsiang is still the gentle giant she raised with love.
Mrs. Juan
Mother of traffic accident victim
He was so sweet with his sister. I was pregnant with her, and I told him, “When your little sister’s born, you have to take good care of her!” He never fought over things with her. If he had some nice thing, he’d always let her use it first. He loved her very much. It’s his birthday on the lunar calendar today. I’ve got this tattoo with him on. It says, “My dear baby.”
If Sheng-hsiang hadn’t been killed in a traffic accident, he would now be 28. The accident happened on Xinhai新海 Bridge when he was just 21.
News broadcast
Past 8 p.m. on the 19th, Mr. Fu, 58, was driving a taxi across Xinhai Bridge when he suddenly lost control of the vehicle. Swerving left, he drove through the traffic control bollards of the central lane, crashing into two scooters driving in the opposite direction. Both scooters’ riders were thrown from their seats. They were taken to hospital where they both died of their injuries.
At the scene of the accident, one scooter was badly mangled. The other was trapped between the taxi and the side of the curb. The taxi itself sustained damage, with a broken windshield and airbags set off. It’s clear the crash was massive. This was how Mrs. Juan’s beloved son passed away. She and her husband could hardly accept the tragedy and have grieved intensely for years. They’ve not yet been able to rebuild their lives, and have sometimes experienced suicidal thoughts.
Mrs. Juan
Mother of traffic accident victim
No matter what kind of awful problem you have, you can still feel like there is hope. But this suddenly takes away all your hope in life. Your life is not worth living anymore. Because I’ve always loved my kids so much. They are everything to me.
The Juan family has run a funeral home for more than 30 years. Sheng-hsiang’s father Juan Chaio-pen is no stranger to death. He says he was an inattentive young father, who was more concerned with his own amusement than cherishing time with his son. When his son was killed, it turned his life upside down, and he experienced a pain he could never have imagined.
Juan Chiao-pen
Father of traffic accident victim
Before, when I met the families of deceased persons, I often said the stock phrase, “Please keep your head up.” But since Sheng-hsiang 聖翔 passed away, we don’t say that. Because it’s impossible to keep your head up. Now I just tell people, “Hang in there.”
Seven years after the accident, Chiao-pen is still unwilling to enter his son’s room. He doesn’t want to stir up the pain.
Juan Chiao-pen
Father of traffic accident victim
I can’t live there anymore. There are traces of my son everywhere. I couldn’t go into work for about three years. I couldn’t cross Xinhai Bridge for five whole years. I only recently managed. But every time I cross it, I say his name.
Xinhai Bridge is just 9 meters wide. Though it serves traffic both ways, it originally had no barrier between the lanes. This barrier was only erected after Juan Chiao-pen campaigned for it.
Juan Chiao-pen
Father of traffic accident victim
What I have to ask is – we all know we can have barriers. Why did we have to sacrifice two lives, sacrifice two families, for them to be willing to make a barrier? The facts prove that after we had the barrier, there were no more fatal accidents.
Taiwan’s media is full of lurid stories of road accidents, and the grief of victims’ families. Many people have become inured to such news. But behind every statistic is a family broken and an unspeakable pain.
Just how bad is Taiwan’s road safety?
Chang Hsin-li
NYCU Transportation and Logistics Dept. professor
Our initial estimate is that 3,000 people die on Taiwan’s roads every year. There are also more than 480,000 people injured. In total, it’s almost NT$500 billion – that’s the annual losses. How much is 500 billion? NT$500 billion can build a high-speed railway. Think about it – is that serious? Is that a big number? It’s about 3% of our GDP. Does anyone care?
In 2020 alone, 2,972 people died in traffic accidents in Taiwan, and 485,000 people were injured. But the most worrying fact is that those figures have increased steadily for five years.
Chiu Hsien-chih
Lawmaker
So this is terrifying. It’s not going down – it’s increasing. Compared to other OECD countries, it’s much, much higher. In the past, in Japan in the ’70s, it was the same. It was like a transport war. Now it’s reached a really terrifying point. Think about it. If 3,000 people die in one year, in three years it’s almost 10,000 people.
Taiwan’s transport ministry has bloody statistics in its files. Annual road fatalities have increased every year from the figure of 2,697 in 2017. In just five years, 14,161 people have lost their lives on the road, and there have been more than 2 million injuries. Those figures are more like the results of a war than a transportation network.
It’s especially shocking for immigrants. Editorial journalist Miho Tanaka has lived in Taiwan for eight years. She raged against the terrible state of road safety in Taiwan in one of her latest articles.
Miho Tanaka
Japanese journalist
I had never seen a traffic accident in Japan. But since coming to Taiwan, I’ve seen one every month, or even more. I’ve seen so many accidents, and sometimes I’ve been hit myself. And when I’m on the bus, the way the drivers drive is so shocking. So I’ve gradually been building up this sense of – what the hell is going on?
Tanaka points out that Japan has a population six times that of Taiwan. But it has fewer fatal road accidents. Her article urged Japanese people to take care if they come on holiday to Taiwan post-pandemic. It ignited spirited debate in both Japan and Taiwan, with lots of online commentators echoing its sentiments.
Miho Tanaka
Japanese journalist
Actually, since the article was published, lots of my Japanese friends in Taiwan have told me that they were thinking the same thing, and thanked me for saying it.
Taiwanese people may be blase about the road safety issues here, but many residents from overseas are less sanguine. Japan’s transport ministry has even warned its countryfolk about Taiwan’s roads.
Chen Hung-yi
Taiwan Traffic Safety Association
We are indeed in an extremely dangerous traffic environment, and we don’t even know it. We think it’s normal because we’re used to it. Traffic accidents are absolutely not just a matter of luck. They’re related to our emergency services, our financial systems. Families can break down because somebody is injured. So road safety problems should be seen as a kind of national security issue.
Road safety is, in fact, a hot topic for reform worldwide. In 2010, the United Nations published a 10-year road safety action plan, which aimed to cut global traffic accident deaths in half by 2020.
In 2015, Taiwan’s Executive Yuan published its own road safety progress plan, vowing to strive for zero deaths and serious injuries. The short-term goal was to have fewer than 2,500 fatalities annually by 2019. But that was not to be.
Reporter
What do you think of the state of Taiwan’s roads? If you compare them to other countries?
Wu Mu-fu
MOTC traffic safety committee secretary-general
We can’t beat around the bush about this – compared to other OECD member states, we are in the remedial class. We used to hope that we could improve as fast as possible, but in the last few years, in fact, the big picture has really changed very fast.
The transport ministry says there are several factors in Taiwan’s worsening road safety crisis. One is the ever-increasing number of scooters on the road. There were 13.66 million in 2016. In 2021, it was 14.25 million, representing a rise of nearly 600,000 in six years. To make matters worse, as Taiwan’s elderly population increases, the number of older adults getting killed on the road is growing too.
Wu Mu-fu
MOTC traffic safety committee secretary-general
For example, in 2020 there were 2,972 deaths in traffic accidents. But 1,235 of those people were aged 65 or above. That’s 41% of the total, but that age group is only 16% of the overall population. So it’s obvious that if an older adult gets in an accident, if they’re hit, they’re often very likely to pass away. So older adults are more vulnerable road users.
The roads are more and more complicated. Is the government doing enough to keep us safe?
Chiu Hsien-chih
Lawmaker
We’re not analyzing our traffic incidents deeply enough. If an accident occurs today, you’ll probably know that the victim died afterward. But you don’t go on and analyze the causes of their death. So that’s why we’re demanding that the MOTC road safety data website have as much data as possible. That will make it possible to analyze further and to actually diagnose the problem, to find solutions that will actually reduce the number of accidents like that.
If even basic analyses are lacking, how can officials reform the roads? Meanwhile, another major issue is road safety education. Taiwan lags way behind other nations. The “3Es” are a common refrain among road safety campaigners: education, engineering, and enforcement. Road safety education is a vital part of reforming Taiwan’s traffic culture.
In Japan, road safety classes are a staple of childhood. Elementary schools teach kids how to work out the speed of a vehicle and where its blind spots are. Lessons are even taught using realistic simulations.
Road safety concepts are drilled into Japanese schoolchildren, who learn everything from the hazards posed by large trucks to the risks of carrying an umbrella on a bicycle.
But in Taiwan, there is no equivalent, systematic road safety education for children.
Lin Yueh-chin
Jing Chuan Child Safety Foundation
What education do we offer? Even if we just talk about the basics – could the Ministry of Education offer four hours of class? In South Korea, they have 24 hours. I’m sorry – we do have something. Schools say we do teach it. But how do they? We’re still seeing calligraphy competitions and essay competitions.
Chang Hsin-li
NYCU Transportation and Logistics Dept. professor
If you ask a member of the public, in all these years, what did your school and driving education teach you? How much knowledge and skills did you get to protect your safety on the road? How did the teacher teach road safety? They say they do it, but they don’t really teach, and not systematically. Taiwan wanted to pass a law saying schools must teach road safety, but it couldn’t get passed. If even that can’t get passed, if you don’t forcefully promote road safety education, then how are we going to get the general public to develop these habits from childhood?
Every day, eight people in Taiwan leave home and never come back. As our road conditions continue to get more complex, many experts believe that more must be done to make our roads safer.
Source: https://englishnews.ftv.com.tw/read.aspx?sno=39BAAD0CB40B2D1A967FBBF3DB61D18D
and mess with the flow? That is the preserve of the deities. 
