As an aside. We really need to kake emergency service e.ergency lights illegal unless an actual emergency. I think you know what I mean and can probably explain it it better. But the emergency service vehicles casually driving around with lights is a BIG cause of actual innaction. It is obviously kostly police. Fire and ambulance tend not to just cruise around, nor have the entitlement and ego. The cops need to turn off lights and follow the fucking rules like everyone, until they actually have a job to do. This is how people are intimidated and court hearings are lost: “the lights were on”. Piss right the fuck off…
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Not sure about that. Pedestrian islands divide opposite traffic directions. This driver was driving the wrong way so a traffic island would have been to their right, far away from hitting the car. Also, we can’t trust Taiwanese drivers capacity to see pedestrian islands, can we?
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Both of these are more dangerous than they are worth. Ban them both
Such drivers tend to notice the pedestrian islands a lot more after hitting them.
Even the MOTC is getting tired of it and has now resorted to just sharing their own meme type picture on social media with their official Threads/Instagram account.
They’re probably posting this because of all the recent incidents involving people hitting them in just the past few days alone.
In Changhua’s Tianzhong 4 people have hit a pedestrian island in just 2 days. This is despite the fact that there’s the dashed guiding lines.
In Yunlin’s Douliu a driver hit the pedestrian island, popping her vehicle up on it’s side and blocking part of the road. She was able to climb out with the help of some bystanders.
Driver and whole family gets out of car to attack a scooter rider who has their kid with them. This all happened because earlier the car driver came way too close when making an illegal overtake on the right and almost hit the scooter. After coming up to the red light the scooter rider swore at him so the whole family comes out of the car with driver seemingly even grabbing the riders neck and even coming back again to punch him.
Police identified and contacted both parties, but from what’s reported in the news seems like the police will do nothing. The scooter rider said he is contemplating suing the driver. The car driver is 74 years old…
If I recall correctly this has been in the news a couple of times for causing some confusion amongst Taiwanese traveling abroad having police turn their lights on them to pull them over…but they kept on driving because they thought it was like Taiwan where the lights don’t really mean anything.
It’s something I wish would be changed. The idea that it’s to show that police are “on duty” is kind of silly to me. It becomes a convenient excuse for them…ran a red light? On duty. Made an illegal turn from the middle lane and almost hit someone going straight in the outer lane? On duty. Almost hit a pedestrian? On duty. No fines or punishment…unless they get on the news and hurt the image of the police.
Maybe the most important one is when dealing with illegal parking…double yellow and a car blocking the traffic lane? Don’t worry they just drive across the double yellow and ignore the illegally parked vehicle and no ticket for themselves because they are “on duty”…yet should anyone else do the same thing they would probably get a fine given how police have been doing things…which is why you see more places removing double yellow lines on a lot of side streets and replacing them with single dashed yellow lines so people can go around the illegally parked vehicles.
Oh and of course the illegal parking on the crosswalk so they can buy a drink from the drink shop too…that they sometimes also come by and blare their sirens to move everyone along at. I do think that parking planning in general is pretty terrible in Taiwan…but come on…parking on the crosswalk…
Sometimes you see them sit in their car and blow their loud siren and wait for double parked drivers to drive away…then 40m down the road ignore all the cars blocking MULTIPLE crosswalks, near a school…yeah I saw that a few days ago. Or you see them with their lights on…and simply ignore dozens of illegal parked vehicles. Even better when they ignore ENTIRE traffic lines completely impassable due to people just parking in the road to eat at some restaurant.
Or the classic, blow your sirens, get out of the car and move as slow as possible to give everyone as much of a “chance” as possible…which is to say do everything they can to not have to do any paperwork…despite the whole system on their end being updated and made faster, easier, and more secure due to corruption involving multiple Taichung city police officers messing around with the traffic tickets…
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Means the cop is on duty, so there is a chance although marginal that they might actually stop someone who breaks the law. No lights means off duty so drive like there is no law
It’s nice to have the warning TBH
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And the traffic planning in general. It’s funny, because they pride themselves on engineering, but they’re terrible engineers, but that’s the thing they think they’re best at!
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As per usual…they allow/create a dangerous left turn.
As is you have to cross 3 lanes of traffic (plus the road divider) while pedestrians are crossing!
I used the older street view here to have a clearer picture, only difference is the outer lane is both turn and straight now.
It’s actually easy to fix with some design changes but it’s likely the local govt. doesn’t want to spend the money to fix it and or have to deal with multiple departments.
There’s enough space to have a centered dedicated turn lane by redesigning the road divider rather than the current mixed use though and left turn lane. With the dedicated turn lane a left turn only phase could be added. Significantly increasing safety for left turning vehicles and pedestrians. Would also significantly improve though traffic flow as now you won’t have everyone being held up by one left turning vehicle who is going to have to wait for a red light to even have a chance to make a safe left turn.
Without the added turn lane in the middle all it takes is one car turning left in the inner lane and then all the other cars in the inner lane wanting to go straight will force their way into the middle lane, forcing traffic in the inner lane to be pushed over into the outer lane…creating a very dangerous situation.
More likely they’d “fix it” by just using paint to make those piece of crap zig-zagging lanes that are also dangerous…but common in some areas.
Not exactly the same but a similar type of road (no dedicated left turn lane) which has been improved in Taichung. JianXing Rd. Before it was the standard straight 4 lanes up an down the whole road. With the sidewalk renovation and widening and curb extensions (along with parking bays) the road was narrowed down to 3 lanes in terms of width, with a dedicated turn lane in the middle. Only have to cross one lane of traffic and with the significant improvement in visibility of both pedestrians and oncoming vehicles its way safer than before.
Also as a bonus the sidewalks being extended between the parking bays leave space for utility poles and signs that won’t be in the way of pedestrians. TaiPower…take a hint.
Isn’t this a fun way to enjoy Taitung…guy trying to run you off the road with his car because he’s mad at you for not riding in the slow lane…which there isn’t and it’s actually just the shoulder. Even better is that right in front of the cammer…is another car…and it’s raining.
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Driver accelerates to get through an orange but still ends up running the red and almost hitting a bunch of kids in front of Beitou elementary school.
Looks like the driver even crosses over the double yellow to go around the scooter in front of them stopping for the yellow light.
Obviously the driver is at fault here. The government is a close second because of the enforcement and engineering which encourage this behaviour.
But
What is the purpose of a crossing guard if they can’t be bothered to look for traffic? And why are those kids running into the road without looking first
This is Taiwan, they have to assume someone is running the light. Look before walking into the road FFS
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Have run into alot of these two types lately:
-Cars deciding they are going to get in your lane no matter you are there or not. They simply start trying to crowd you out. Last week the car next to me just started swerving into my lane. I honked. They swerved again. I honked. He kept trying two more times till he simply ran out of road in front of him so slowed down and pulled in behind me.
-Cars pulling out into the extended left turn lane used to wait when have standard general green light. I think they misunderstand that when they are facing a red light they must wait at the white line but they just pull out into the striped curved lane to wait. Yesterday heading into an intersection there was a car in the intersection waiting to make left turn. Seeing that I knew I could not get around him…and at the same time the car next to me wants to turn right but needs to push me out of my lane. The end result is I stop in the intersection. The car on my left side also stops but actually has space to go through the intersection but still wants to make a right turn and is now trying to push me out of my lane. I have to honk at him. The car trying to make a left turn realizes he is blocking cars so he backs up. I move through the intersection. The car on my left swerves in front of other cars to make a right turn.
with the daily car crash pr0n you’d think they’d know better. It’s a mystery never to be unraveled.
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All I know is the traffic light engineering/planning better not be the best they’ve got because it’s horrendous how bad the light timing. Also less than a handful of intersections have any type of dynamic timing…
To go back to the pedestrian islands for a bit…even a tank/tank driver can easily navigate around them…yet somehow drivers in vehicles with significantly better visibility can’t…
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Japan records record low for traffic fatalities for 2025.
Traffic accident deaths in Japan fell to a record low in 2025, dropping 116, or 4.4%, from the previous year to 2,547, the National Police Agency said Tuesday.
The figure is the lowest since records began in 1948, but it fell short of the government’s target of cutting fatalities to 2,000 or fewer by 2025.
Taiwan’s data for 2025 lags quite far behind Japan as we are still stuck with data only up to September.
For some context, using data for 2024 for both countries, Taiwan recorded 2,950 traffic deaths and Japan recorded 2,663 traffic deaths. Taiwan had 10% more traffic fatalities, despite Japan having a population size more than 400% larger than Taiwan (~122mil. vs. ~23 mil.)
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But why? Presumably there was a quota for sidewalk “construction” to be filled in NeiHu. The, presumably paid, parking spots on each side of it appear to be illegally close to the junction and pedestrian crossings.
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In Keelung actor Stone Yang (楊傑宇) turning left hit and killed a woman in her 80s on the crosswalk.
Left turning taxi driver hits a pedestrian on the crosswalk in Keelung.
Left turning taxi driver hits a pedestrian island. Seems to be in Linkou
A Y-intersection in Kaoshiung with a crosswalk (no pedestrian signal) always have traffic going through no matter the phase…meaning pedestrians have an almost impossible time crossing. After being reported in the news the city said they will make changes.
The green paint is something that local transportation dept. can do. Actually building out the curb and doing a physical curb extension/sidewalk has to go through the local Construction Bureau. Given previously Taipei had well over a thousand sections of painted sidewalks that were supposed to be upgraded to physical sidewalks…and after a decade not a single one did…there seems to be some major communication/priority issues going.
Some places may also opt. for paint first to try out design changes before committing to making changes with concrete so that further adjustments can be more easily made. In Taiwan’s case though I think the more common reason is because of the different departments, lots of red tape, funding, local push back, then things get pushed off to the wayside and or forgotten about.
As for the car parking space so close to the intersection…that looks a lot better than quite a few places I’ve seen around Taichung. Some have the parking space all the way right up to the crosswalk…an uncontrolled crosswalk 
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Question is why in this particular location. The existing sidewalk is already quite wide, probably wider than the area to the left and right where there is no green painted sidewalk.
maybe it’s to discourage people from parking on the corner to run in and get their starbucks…?
Also thinking it might be and how sad it is that it needs to be like that.
Yeah if that’s the case then green painted corners might become more widespread. Not sure how much of a deterrence it would be. Maybe a proper bulbout at the height of a pedestrian island is called for 
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It must feel pretty safe to stand on that green paint as a pedestrian, while Taiwanese drivers circumnavigate the roundabout. No money for real pavements, no money for vertical signs, no money for good engineers.
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