I think it’s an old standard practice, a cultural tradition. For every left pass there must be one million right passes.
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Non-existent defensive riding training. Next to non-existent rider training. Nearly half a century of teaching people to make left turns from the right. Telling people to ride on the right or outright banning people from riding anywhere but the right. Putting motorcycles and bicycles together on the right.
Add on all the other problems and no retraining for the terrible road users (who likely shouldn’t have a license anyways) due to near non-existent points system and enforcement the only surprising thing is why it doesn’t happen more.
Seen some really stupid overtakes on the right by cars too, but on a scooter something like the above incident is just insane to even think of attempting to squeeze by.
It reminds me a year or two ago when 2 teenagers on a single scooter were riding up to Wuling and tried squeeze past a truck on the right of the mountain road and hit a patch of gravel lost control and both got ran over by the wheels and died.
Oh and of course just the general lack of any sort of patience on the road for many people here.
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Oh yeah, and import some driving instructors and police to make sure that when the lines are drawn properly the drivers stay in between them
Maybe just ban Taiwanese drivers is the easiest thing. @gain had said scooters should be banned since most deaths were from scooters, which was the genesis for #banleftturns, but following the same logic if the majority of deaths in Taiwan involve Taiwanese drivers then the solution is pretty obvious…
I never understood this, does anyone know another country where keeping the headlights off at night is so common?
Like this?
Although passing on the left do not yield better outcomes
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Another POS garbage intersection the design that Taichung city still has yet to do anything about. Passes by YiZhong night market, Taichung First. Sr. High School and Taichung University of Science and Technology. Busy road lots of traffic.
Video on threads of someone showing them with a green straight arrow being hit by a car turning left from the oncoming traffic side who has a regular round green signal.
Going towards Taichung park there is a dedicated turn lane with a left turn only phase. This is often filled with quite a few buses turning towards the train station area.
The problem is the other side has a regular green light…meaning they can make a left turn whenever and there is no dedicated left turn lane. It’s impossible to see any oncoming traffic due to the large number of buses. Add on the much larger amount of traffic going towards Taichung park it is not uncommon to have to wait until the light changes red before you can turn, seriously impeding through traffic and resulting in drivers/riders behind turning vehicles often forcing their way into the outer lane and causing accidents or near misses or seriously slowing down traffic in attempts to go around.
What’s really stupid is it’s so easy to fix. Looking again at the side going to the park (with the dedicated left turn lane) the outer lane is just one big outer lane and after crossing the intersection it turns into 3 lanes! The fix is as simple as taking the inner lane and turn about a third or a half of it into a dedicated turn lane on the other side and have the other side with a dedicated turn only phase as well.
Significantly safer, significantly smoother flow of traffic, plenty of road space to easily make adjustments. Literally no reason not to do. So the answer is to not do it.
Also as a fun note the inner lane here in this last image used to have a road marking for banning motorcycles…as you can see that’s no longer there so surely that must mean you can make a regular left turn like a regular person in any country right? Nope, here’s a hook turn sign right up at the intersection to screw you over.
What’s even funnier is this spot used to be even dumber…a few years ago the inner lane used to have a straight only arrow…then 50-60m up ahead it’s a left turn only arrow.
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There are some people making seriously bad decisions out there. 
The range of risk assessment in Taiwan is something I will never understand.
Guy
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I really think people take the concept of “fate” too seriously here. Something bad happens and I hear some friends say that the incident was fate. But I am thinking to myself that the guy should have driven slower while driving his motorcycle in a rainstorm.
I always joke with my wife that these guys driving way, way too fast resulting in a crash were on their way to the local temple to get their lucky talisman to hang in the car for luck. Like I mentioned before…my wife came out of a temple where she overheard a guy asking the temple for a talisman to hang in his car because he had his new car for a week and already had a wreck…so he thought he needed a talisman to ward off any more trouble.
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Clearly the problem was the car. He should buy another one.
Guy
As per usual, just a mention of a type of accident and Wowtchout channel and it’s contributors shall provide. This one involves a scooter cop.
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In this case the fault is car or motorcycle? Using your turn signal should inform motorcycle to slow diwn…but do not know the rules about watching out for motorcycles coming alongside.
What the hell
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Perhaps late for class at National Chung Hsing University? 
Guy
Just another Monday in Taichung
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Cement truck illegally parked next to crosswalk. Driver starts to drive off and doesn’t notice the person on the bike in front of them on the crosswalk and runs over them. Dead on the spot.
On Google street view there’s also the same color cement truck on the road. I wonder if it’s the same company.
Right there is Kuo-Kuang Elementary School. More likely it’s an elementary school student late to do school cleaning or whatever else it is they’re doing now.
Alas it’s just an old driver. 76yr. old driver for unknown reasons went flying into the road divider. Looks like he barely fell short of getting up onto the sidewalk on the other side.
Given the media exposure maybe the cop will get full blame.
Despite the ridiculous size of some of the lanes in Taiwan one lane is still one lane for the most part. Although you might get hit with “failing to pay attention” and have it 30% your fault depending on the circumstances surrounding it.
Another Taichung classic. Trying to start shit. Guy deliberately rams into a car then eventually runs. Online people share another video of them almost getting run down by them on another road.
Recently we also had this. Guy on one of the main roads, WenXin Rd. sees a police checkpoint and tries to flee and hits an officer. Police fire a shot. Guy screaming he’s sorry as he’s being dragged out of his car after crashing. The guy only made it 200m..
Also this recent one. A monk crashed into an “imported car” and tried to flee and was stopped by bystanders. He’s not being cooperative with police and ends up on the ground. He claims his blood sugar was low. He had no alcohol in his system.
I suppose it’s a bit ironic the car might he hit might be considered illegally parked depending on how far into the road it was. At the very least the cones on the roads are illegal.
Crazy guy goes onto the pedestrian path on the underpass with his mini-electric moped/bike and bumps into elderly pedestrians and starts beating them. The victims can be heard screaming for help. A nearby university student goes over to help and inform them he’s already called the police. The assailant then continues to assault the elderly pedestrians and the uni. student and the student eventually gets the assailant on the ground. Not the first time he’s been in the news as he tried threatening someone with a brick before whilst drunk. Bad enough having to deal with the deadly pedestrian environment as is…
An unlicensed driver had an accident and when police looked up his records they saw his license was already revoked. They also saw that he had more than 200 unpaid traffic violations.
Been a while since we had a story about fake plates. Police chase after a car with fake plates. Police fired 12 shots. Driver was able to escape. Given the use of AI recognition systems police have been able to easily notice fake plates quite easily compared to before. Still though some people still use them.
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Wild west in Taiwan, 12 bullets flying everywhere, driver escapes!
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Why does it look like everyone is doing whatever they want?
Because they are doing whatever they want.
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Close to the Chungcheng Armed Forces Prep. School. Teaching the students to dodge shitty road users.
If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball.
If you can dodge a wave of 三寶 you can dodge a bullet.
But it does seem like Fengshan district in Kaoshiung comes up a lot when it comes to the dashcam videos shared online and traffic accidents in the news.
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