The drivers in my home city have no concern for anyone but them. I drive a scooter back home and in Taiwan, and I feel much safer here overall.
Every day in Toronto while riding, someone would just move over into my lane without looking, and this with me in blocking position in my own lane (my province does not allow lane splitting like Taiwan) And you know why they don’t allow lane splitting? Because they know that tard car drivers would turn accidentally or on purpose and cut off motorcycles.
When I say that Taiwanese are more aware, an example would be that when people see an obstruction up ahead, the vast majority move over making way for the entire line of scooters. If this was Canada, the line without the obstruction would insist on their “right of way” and not move over causing an collision. Even cars for the most part slowly cut across the scooter lane to turn because they have an awareness that scooters are there. In Toronto, the car driver would just abruptly turn (again why they do not allow lane splitting)
I would say that for the most part, the traffic in Taiwan is pretty controlled with the exception of hoon driving by young’uns and old people that should have had their licenses taken away years prior.
Interestingly, I keep my headlights on all the time here, and yes I do get told my every Amah about it, but it certainly helps because I noticed when people see the light, they stop instead of cutting me off. The light appears to give them some awareness of my speed and distance. I have put on about 35000 km in 2.5 years going all over the island and for the most part am aware of the driving condition and adjust to it, never had a problem.
Good points Dan, of course it’s the sheer number of scooters on the congested streets that is probably the main cause of accidents. scooters aren’t well designed in terms of safety, when you come off or if you get hit it could be curtains any time. They are usually stable but don’t do well in wet conditions or downhill.
[quote=“PaMaFanAiFangBian”]@Jesus and other riders
I don’t ride in Taiwan (hopefully one day I shall be able to convince my wife) but what are your views. Regarding motorcycles (not scooters) do you feel safer riding in Taiwan as opposed to your home country. Outside of the city are the risks comparable? Is it actually safer in the city due to the lower speeds?[/quote]
I would say that there’s a lot of dangers on the road, specially because Taipei/Taiwan looks deceivingly civilized. I’ll develop this idea more later at home.
I would say that Taiwan’s roads are dangerous, so city roads are. And the main reason is chaos. And the second reason is that sometimes your forget about that chaos.
Sure, there are also idiots. That’s part of the chaos. And also people here look (supposedly) towards, but rarely backwards, thing that you should keep in mind all the time.
I can’t compare with riding in my country because I barely have done it. Big motorcycles are more fun, and more powerful and well, more of a motorbike… better brakes, suspension, etc. Of course, you lose, generally speaking, some agility in exchange. The good thing of having a red plate (big motorcycle) is that you have access to some roads that are mainly for cars, which means that traffic is more predictable… overall.
I love to ride here. But again I have also woke up many times dreaming of a head to head crash with a truck.
Don’t ride on the wan ! If you do ride, you better have wits like a fighter pilot because you do need that. And best not to carry anyone, it makes the scoot/moto less handle-able. That said, it is a singular pleasure to be on a scoot/moto on the rock (out of the cities). You do see things from a different perspective.
Only out in the countryside though.
Riding in the cities suck PERIOD. DONT DO IT.
no redeeming value at all.
I do agree that the roads here are a form of choreographed chaos. Once you know the dance, it’s easy to go with the flow. However you would be picking up a whole load of bad habits in doing do.
Interestingly from looking at various reports, the death rate for traffic accidents in Taiwan for cars/scooters/motos combined is not that much higher than other developed countries.
In 2010, the death rate for motorised vehicle accidents is approx 8.9 per 100,000 population. Taking that figure alone makes Taiwan safer to drive in than New Zealand (9.1), Hungary (9.1), USA (11.4), Greece (12.2), Korea (14.), but worse than UK(3.7), Germany(4.7), Singapore(5.1), Japan(5.2), Spain(5.4), France(6.4), Australia(6.1), Canada(6.8).
If you then discount the Taiwan scooter/moto fatalities, being 60% of the fatality figure compared with 25% or less for developed countries, then that would place Taiwan in the very safe country category to be a driver in.
[quote=“PaMaFanAiFangBian”]@Jesus and other riders
I don’t ride in Taiwan (hopefully one day I shall be able to convince my wife) but what are your views. Regarding motorcycles (not scooters) do you feel safer riding in Taiwan as opposed to your home country. Outside of the city are the risks comparable? Is it actually safer in the city due to the lower speeds?[/quote]
I used to ride sports-bikes and MX bikes back in the UK, but I don’t think I’ll bother Taiwan. Without a shadow of a doubt the roads are much safer in the UK, for all users.
As for outside the cities I think the odds of you having a bump are reduced a little. But I think the odds of a more serious accident are higher. Just like the accident in the OP article, driving outside the city (and inside) people just don’t look or give way, add the higher speeds and the outcome is gonna be grim.
Driving standards here are just very low unfortunately. People aren’t educated properly, there’s no enforcement and drink driving is rife it seems.
I would love to have a big bike, but getting a license seems like such a ball-ache. If I could just use my UK license I may have considered it.
@ShutUplegs
I have large bike license from the UK. When I applied for an international one I noticed it included motorcycles not exceeding 400kg( 900lbs) which is plenty for me. I was going to use this to ride in Taiwan (as a short term solution) but now maybe not…
Taiwan isn’t all that bad of a place to drive, and I feel safer driving here than in Canada, mainly because people here are at least better prepared for the unexpected. Everyone in Canada drives in a trance, never expecting anything sudden to happen in front of them. When it does, they’re less capable of reacting and they panic. As has already been mentioned, the Taiwanese handle obstructions and irregularities much better.
That’s not to say it’s perfect here, but it isn’t as bad as tommy525 is trying so hard to make people believe. It’s okay to drive in the cities, and it’s okay to have a passenger. I think it’s even legal, if I’m not mistaken, but I’ll let tommy525 refute that if he wants to research it. As far as all those statistics go, it doesn’t seem that bad if you consider the population and number of motorcycles and scooters in Taiwan. But I don’t believe scooters are the main problem. Cars are more dangerous to scooters than other scooters. In all of those fatalities, I’d like to know how many were scooter-scooter and how many were car-scooter. I believe scooter-scooter accidents would be much less serious.
Also, for anyone who’s remotely interested in society, public transportation, bicycles, and single- and double-occupant transportation seem to be what cities are trying to encourage. The days of a single driver in a big 4-door car commuting to work may not be around in a few decades. On the highways, maybe, but cities are getting too crowded for all these cars.
As far as the accident mentioned in the original post goes, is it possible that speed just may have been a factor? That is something that can happen in a car, too, you do realize. It’s actually rather ironic that this scooter accident would be used to highlight the dangers of scooters when Furious 7 is still in theaters, considering that Paul Walker died in a similar manner, but in a vehicle that just happened to not be a scooter.
Taiwanese go to a driving school to learn driving. Which means they learn basically ZERO there.
Then they get a license and get released on the roads. If they don’t hurt or kill themselves in the next few years they get better at driving/riding. And most of them actually get quite good. The problem is the large amounts of inexperienced drivers/riders on the streets at any one time.
I did the same, I know how many times I did some stupid sh*t before i realized that that was incredibly bad driving/riding. I managed to survive without getting killed or killing anyone, or hurting anyone. And that is at least a minor miracle. I have been run into (in a car) by a truck head on. Lucky not hurt even though my car was thrown back 11 feet and i had no seat belt on (stoopid for sure). I have been run into by a scoot , broadsided .Dented the door, the ninjas escaped. I have run into a scoot and a moto (both survived near sudden death, one literally flew head over heels and did a circle in the air and luckily landed on his butt, the other jumped off his moto just before i knocked his moto about 100 feet away).
Some drunk opened his door in heavy traffic in the afternoon and i ran right into said door and off my scoot. Was ok, though.
So all in all, pretty lucky !!
500,000 plus Kilometers of driving on Taiwan roads and about 14,000KM of scoot riding is my personal experience. My 50cc couldnt do much out of the cities so it was mostly city riding, which frankly…sucks.
The problem with the scoot/moto is obviously you have zero protection in an accident. And it is so ridiculously easy to get killed or if lucky ,just hurt on a scoot/moto. So you have to do your darnest to keep from getting into an accident. So you have to have seven senses and have a 360 degree swivelling head.
That plus the fact that in Northern TAiwan it gets frickin cold and it frickin rains all the motha frickin time !!!
So that makes riding a scoot/moto OUT for me. And you shouldn’t ride one either unless you are frickin AWESOME and have some watchful Angels watching over ya.
Yes, but you’ll notice you got into accidents with cars, too. And, although you may not want to admit it, you probably avoided a number of accidents because you were on a scooter, and thus were able to maneuver out of the way. If I were to take your advice to its natural conclusion, I’d also have to avoid riding my (environmentally friendly and healthy-lifestyle-promoting) bicycle because there isn’t much protection there when someone runs into you.
The problem is you won’t acknowledge that most people in Taiwan do okay riding scooters (and bicycles). You take your experiences and assume they must represent everyone. My mother is the same way. She assumes that because she can’t ride a motorcycle, no one else must possess that skill either. That’s simply not the case.
Your analysis of Taiwan’s driving education is fair, and that’s where the problem chiefly lies. So why not focus on that? It’s always scooters, scooters, scooters with you. Again, focus on the main problem instead, and don’t let your driving record cloud the issue.
And no one needs any special powers when riding a scooter. Balance, an understanding of traffic movement, and alertness are all you really need, but you can’t be below average in this regard. There will, of course, be some wholely unavoidable incidents where you’re completely blindsided. Just hope it’s another scooter rider and not some person insisting on driving their car in these already crowded cities.
the scoot/moto can not be eliminated from use in Taiwan because it is too important a tool for a great number of people. And most people do handle them quite well.
I will like to see them not carry passengers though to be honest. I know again they are useful for this purpose at times. But personally I would vote against their use for other then single rider (and perhaps a pooch on the scoot may be allowed , as again far too many pooches ride scoots to outlaw the practice). And of course i do NOT mean the dog riding the scoot by himself here
I will like to see actual improvements in driver education BEFORE they get a license. Mainly this concern is for car drivers. As a lot of scoot / moto riders simply ride before getting a license in the first place and that seems to be condoned.
It is NOT about me really. I just have seen too many horrible scoot/moto deaths with my own eyes on the streets of the wan.
With the exception of your dislike of carrying passengers, this is a very balanced and reasonable post. You should stick with this mantra rather than the scooters-are-the-devil one. At least this one is more aware of what a society needs to function well.
Blaming the mode of transport is daft, it’s people that cause the accidents. The only way things will change here is through better education, training and stricter enforcement of traffic laws. Which is unlikely to happen anytime soon I imagine.
It’s also sad to see that in almost every report I’ve read in the press on moto/scoot related deaths in Taiwan, the police always focus heavily on the speed of the riders regardless of whether speeding or the riders themselves caused the accident. They just ignore the underlying problems.
[quote=“PaMaFanAiFangBian”]@ShutUplegs
I have large bike license from the UK. When I applied for an international one I noticed it included motorcycles not exceeding 400kg( 900lbs) which is plenty for me. I was going to use this to ride in Taiwan (as a short term solution) but now maybe not…[/quote]
I have the same, oddly enough the only time I’ve rented a scoot it was 150cc and the guy wasn’t the least bit interested in seeing my license.
It’s hard to have an objective view on road safety in Taiwan as detailed hard data is lacking.
From what I see when I am driving, I imagine a lot of the scooter accidents are as a result of poor riding from the scooter riders themselves. Yes cars pose a hazard, and careless drivers more so. However I see very few people ride with any basic road awareness.
As an example, when it starts to rain, the speed of the scooters picks up as they all rush to get home. They seldom slow down/look left/right at junctions, and when they turn, I see very few perform the basic “life saver” look over the shoulder. I almost always find a scooter in my blind spot.
Which leads me to believe that if you are a good rider, Taiwan is not as dangerous as the numbers suggest, as while there are more road hazards (cars triple parking outside a 7 or anywhere else for that matter), the traffic is slower and the road users less aggressive.
What you see/read/hear is actually misleading as you have a huge body of idiots who distort the truth…unless of course you are one of them.
I would further hazard to say that, if you could get them, scooter/moto stats in mountain areas and major expressways are more representative of your chances on them, as the riders that use them are more experienced and careful.
If you’re going to be first away at a green light, always look both ways. That scooter didn’t, and paid a heavy price.
You can’t just open the throttle each time you see a green, and expect to be alright every time.
It’s tragic, but the scooter could have avoided this as Nuit mentioned.
Who knows what was going on. Maybe she was in a rush to get to a hospital or something very urgent and had a moment of carelessness. We have all been there and mostly gotten away with it.
Poor girl did not.
In the news article that was linked, it said that the road junction had 11 CCTV cameras on the area, but they were all broken, so the police struggled to figure out how it exactly happened. Fortunately the person who called the police had it all on the car-cam.
I just remembered that two or three days ago I saw three different scooter accidents in Zhongxiao bridge; at the beginning, at the middle and at the end. And those are not the only ones i’ve seen this week…
worth