Sorry, but no. Penalize people who park their scooters on the sidewalk, but DON’T CHOP DOWN THE TREES!!!
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Unpopular opinion, modify these pedestrian island pylons aka car turnover devices. I streetviewed San Francisco and they’re all looking like 5-10cm. it’s a cruel joke for taiwanese drivers.
While the new footpaths look nice, why didn’t they plant some trees for shade?
Who doesn’t like to walk on a hot day, surrounded by nothing but artificial materials, enjoying the sun with no shade whatsoever?
It’s a fact Taiwanese love to get toasted. Umbrellas and tinted car windows are unrelated.
Sigh. I guess the nobody walks anti sidewalk crowd will have a chance to make a point if these designs prevail.
It’s a tail that feeds itself. A continuum of freedom/nanny/entitlement/infantilism
Pedestrian deaths up. Numbers are comparing Jan. to Sep. for this year and last year.
The Tourism Bureau acknowledged the negative impact of phrases like “pedestrian hell” on Taiwan’s image. However, they emphasized Taiwan’s excellent public safety, convenient healthcare, and diverse tourism resources, urging not to overlook these positives.
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Almost feels like motorists, feeling ever more restricted by new rules, are getting more aggressive, impatient, careless, etc. resulting in more pedestrian fatalities?
I am now obsessed with the idea of implementing, pedestrian-only phases for every pedestrian-busy intersection in the country. If it slows down motorized vehicles, so be it. Not sure what to do with smaller intersections, though.
Empirical studies demonstrate substantial benefits: a New York City analysis of 1998–2008 data across multiple intersections found a 51% reduction in total crashes, including a crash modification factor of 0.49 for vehicle-pedestrian incidents.
Taiwan has widely adopted pedestrian scrambles in Taipei, particularly at high-traffic intersections near schools and transit hubs, with installations expanding since the early 2020s to enhance pedestrian safety amid dense urban mobility.[70] Nationwide plans announced in 2023 aim to implement them at key sites like bus stations and hospitals, prioritizing orderly flow in earthquake-prone environments through robust signal infrastructure.
Of course:
Although designed to enhance safety, some implementations have been linked to increased driver frustration, prompting aggressive driving or rule-breaking, as seen in historical Los Angeles cases where scrambles were removed following complaints from motorists and local businesses.[59]
I would rather not have scrambles everywhere - it doubles the wait time for pedestrians unless you happen to be crossing diagonally.
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The reason why none of that works is because driving a car gives you ‘big man’ rights in Taiwan. People literally believe that they should have the right to park anyway and act like a c*nt just because they own a car. The government agree(they even have more rights to act like a cizzunt because they are in govt) which is why they want to keep it.
Getting rid of this culture is Taiwans only hope of dangerous driving improvement.
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The survey regarding traffic for foreign residents earlier this year is back in the news again.
The survey identified multiple contributing factors, including inadequate driver training, weak enforcement and light penalties, poor road design and infrastructure, low awareness of traffic safety, and difficulties adapting to local traffic rules due to language barriers and limited information, Yeh added.
She also noted that although Taiwan has signed the United Nations Convention on Road Signs and Signals, traffic signs in the country do not fully comply with its standards.
In addition to language barriers, some symbols and colors differ from international norms, creating further difficulties for foreign residents, Yeh said.
Sounds about right. Another issues that local civic groups have complained about for a while.
I didn’t know “Do not fully comply” means 10% compliant or whatever Taiwan is doing.
Is this a Control Yuan” blame the foreigner” news release to pass the buck. 13,000 foreign residents out of a total of 393,918 accidents, 524,485 injuries. (Chat GPT 2024 stats. from the Taiwan Times).
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More people complaining about sidewalks. This time in Pingtung as painted sidewalks are put in and traffic lane removes the motorcycle/slow lane leaving a single traffic lane each way. The complaint is that the motorcycle/slow lane isn’t there anymore. Guess what, it was never really usable due to all the illegal parking there anyways so it’s no difference. If anything the change is better as it provides more legal parking, whereas before most parking was illegal…not that the police would care.
This road is also right next to an elementary school and a park.
Some complaining about the sidewalk being too wide, making safety worse 
Funny how they say there may be an increase amount in the amount of collisions between motorcycles and cars…how hard is it for people to just keep a safe distance in one lane.
Oh and of course since ambulances frequently use this road so that’s another argument against sidewalks! God forbid people just move out of the way like you’re already supposed to. Parking bays are still there and you can move over onto the sidewalk still to make room for emergency vehicles. It’s not hard.
Some are trying to get the sidewalk narrowed or put back in a motorcycle/slow lane..which would significantly narrow the sidewalk.
Police officer dead after rear ended illegally parked delivery truck on the road. Guess it’s a good thing the police are keen on only giving warnings to illegal parking or sitting there for a couple minutes while obviously pretending to issue tickets while they wait for everyone to run out and move their vehicles…only to go around the block and come back and illegally park in the same spot again.
No lenience for safely jaywalking (quite a few places much safer than at the intersection on smaller roads in my experience), doing a normal safe left turn on a motorcycle…or god forbid riding in the inner lane to avoid the dozens of illegally parked vehicles in the outer lanes, and the most heinous of all crimes, crossing on a crosswalk and crossing the whole way while on a flashing green signal and getting a ticket.
The officer’s death left his coworkers heartbroken. I wonder how many of his coworkers would’ve issued a ticket or even bothered to turn on their sirens and watch the driver go? Now the driver of the illegally parked vehicle may be facing a negligent death charge.
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Does this mean, he drove into the parked vehicle at enough speed to kill himself?
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Negligent death charge?? How harsh is that compared to if nobody died then it wouldn’t even be considered a crime by the cops. Or if a pedestrian died, 6000ntd or whatever it is.
Tragic no doubt, but the scooter crashed into the truck looks very far to the right, can even see a lane or two to the left of it and a bunch of scooters parked in front of the truck. Hard to get a sense from the photo.
Video of the incident. The truck was illegally parked in the traffic lane.
In front of the truck those may be legal parking spots for motorcycles, not sure. For whatever reason the officer didn’t notice the truck and rode right into the left back end of it.
In Taichung a migrant worker going straight is killed by a left turning driver. Driver says he thinks the other guy was riding to fast and that the front end of his car already crossed over. The migrant worker collided with the vehicle and then collided with the traffic light pole.
Looking at where his vehicle is it looks like another classic left turning driver turning way too early, cutting over the double yellows, and trying to beat out traffic going straight.
Major incident in Chiayi as a car at high speeds crosses into the other side of the road and hits two vehicles. 2 people dead, 2 injured.
2 more drivers hit pedestrian islands. One in Taichung. The one in Taichung is extremely new. I passed by it a couple of weeks ago when they just started working on it..someone already hit it just about a week after work was done. The other incident, in Tainan, results in the car driving flipping themselves over.
Crazy lady driving around at night on a dark road with no lights on. Gets upset when the cammer tries to tell her to turn on her lights. After the guy catches up to her she even parks in the middle of the road. She even was hugging the left side of the road. She eventually ends up hitting him.
Traffic guard killed by large truck backing up and running him over. Dead on the spot.
Up on mountain roads a truck driver driving on the wrong side of the road hits a motorcyclist. When police shows up the guys on the motorcycles filmed the police having the guy just lightly touch the breathalyzer with his lips and giving a slight blow and calling it good. The guy was being very uncooperative about doing the breathalyzer.
ZhongHua bridge had it’s motorcycle lane modified so it goes around a newly added ramp, rather than letting motorcycles just travel normally and go straight like they used to after a new ramp was added. The new path winds around and there have already been 2 deaths there this past year. Local councilor suggest doing what they’ve done on other bridges already and just let motorcycles go in the regular traffic lanes and ride like normal and have the new path that goes around be just for cyclists and pedestrians.
Prov. Highway in Taichung, ZhongQing Rd. 1st sec., finally got some sidewalks. Just the green painted crap…on a major road. They’ve only did this for a couple sections of this road, so many parts are still without sidewalks. They just went through and repaved the roads here these past few weeks. Would’ve been nice if they built actual sidewalks…
They didn’t even bother fixing their horrendous concrete median so to fix the zig-zagging problem that causes many problems they repainted the traffic lanes to make them straighter, but this results in a lot of wasted space that could be used for either cycling lanes or wider sidewalks. In other sections they’ve repaved some parts seem to zig-zag even more…
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Something so obvious…
Well, not in Taiwan anyway.
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Here’s another good one. Road work on a bridge so both sides only have 1 lane each for traffic. So what do the idiots do? They make motorcycles ride on the sidewalk and even build a ramp on both sides for the motorcycles to get on and off the sidewalks and then once you cross…you have to merge back into the road from an awkward angle which is dangerous. Unbelievably stupid. Of course pedestrians can go die for all they care. Not like they built the sidewalk on the bridge for pedestrians anyways…just look at Kinmen bridge where an underage, unlicensed, speeding motorist rear ended and killing a lady on scooter. The solution? Ban pedestrians from the sidewalks and and ban motorcycles from the traffic lane and make them ride on the sidewalks.
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Suspected drug driving in Keelung! Vehicle crashes on Renyi Road, 3 people rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. A fatal traffic accident occurred on Renyi Road in Keelung City at around 11:00 AM today (15th). A white car was suspected of colliding with several motorcycles along the road before crashing into a fruit stand. A black car blocked the crash, bringing it to a stop. Due to the force of the impact, both cars were severely damaged. It is understood that the driver was driving under the influence of drugs. The accident not only affected eight motorcycles parked on the roadside where people were buying fruit, but also injured three people. One woman was found without a pulse or respiration at the scene, and two others sustained minor injuries and were taken to the hospital.
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