I havent noticed a huge difference in capabilities between male & female
scooter riders. I’ll look out for it in future . Maybe its a left brain, right brain ,visio spacial thing. Having said that women seem to make very good airline pilots. Some of my smoothest landings have been with a woman pilot in control .(I avoided saying “holding the joystick” for fear of my comment being misinterpretted.)
[quote=“Scuba”]Thanks for the suggestions. Clearly the consensus is : let it go
& avoid any confrontation.
Vorkosigan’s post made me feel that I have been living in somewhat
of a vacuum since moving to Taiwan 18 months ago. When people
(from outside) ask me what I like here, one of the comments I always make is that I have never once felt physically threatened. Taipei always seems safer to me than most of the major cities I have visited around the world.
Vorkosigans experience certainly challenges that view.[/quote]
Most people never live here long enough to be physically threatened, so it never occurs to them it can happen. It just depends what kind of ill luck you have. The gangs are discrete in Taipei; in Taliao outside Kaohsiung where I was threatened three years ago, the twon is overrun with gangs. Just last month a group of mobsters on a spree molested somebody in Taliao, on route 25 (Fenglin Rd). A second unfortunate saw the incident, so they followed him from Taliao to Fengshan, shooting at him with a pistol all way along 25 (but missing). Finally he got away. The police claimed they couldn’t find the offenders on the road – but 25 is more than just the main drag between Taliao and Fengshan, it’s really the ONLY WAY to get there. I think a lot of foreigners are simply unaware of the high level of violence in this society. Many have never seen the motorcycle packs that from time to time ride around Kaohsiung at night in groups of up to 200, attacking passers-by.
Another thing is the police don’t tell you. Again, when we lived in Taliao, a nutcase was slashing women in front of the 7-11 by our house, was arrested, imprisoned, served his sentence, let out, and promptly went back to his old tricks. He got 7 or 8 women before they caught him again. Point is, the police never told anyone in the neighborhood about it. There’s no idea of “community.” I know of many stories like this. But why bum you all out?
Vorkosigan
Road Rage - my favorite topic. Well, perhaps not but I would believe that it’s risky to provoke or put up a fight.
I like to bang my flat hand on cars when they nearly run me over while crossing the road - I guess it’s just a question of time until someone stops and comes after me with a baseball bat.
Hm, come to think of it I should get rid of that habbit …
I know how you feel, Rascal. I just can’t stand some drivers.
Personally, I like to push on their mirror so that it folds up - if they cut
me off or something. But I have had a couple of scary encounters
doing this so sometimes I think I should stop it for my own safety.
But sometimes trying to be patient or hold why tongue when people do things which I consider utterly senseless, ruce, or downright dangerous is hard.
Vorkosigan makes a good point about the under reporting or non reporting of crime, at least in the English press. I’ve been in Kaohsiung for 7 years, and while I do think it is a fairly safe city, I know there’s crime that I never hear about, if only because there’s no way a city this size has a crime rate as low as you might assume it to be given the lack of media covereage it gets (I hope that last sentence made sense). His example of the 7-11 guy would never happen in the West. The craziness could surely happen, but there’s no way the media and police wouldn’t be all over it.
Are you kidding? It happens all the time. Considering that “random slashers,” at least in the UK, would more likely be sectioned and locked up in secure mental hospital units without a limit of sentence and later released back onto the streets to fend for themsleves.
This is now standard practice in most of Britain and is a massive headache for social services.
Of course, regular jail offenders are also released and reoffend almost immediately. Look at some of the recent child molesting scandals in the Brit press, involving known pedophiles released back into the community, despite extensive medical reports that they would almost certainly reoffend.
The only stories that make it into the papers are the really big ones – the vast majority of random "madman beatings/stabbings, etc., rarely make it, even into the sidebar stories.
If you want to think that things are ok here, just stick to the English
papers as they don’t report all the robberies, killings, etc. in Taiwan.
If you want to know more (and get a more realistic picture), read or
have someone explain some of the stories in various Chinese papers.
Fair enough tongue twister but though we are often blinkered to a lot of what happens we do live here and i have to say that i find this to be a lot safer than any other place i’ve lived in.
Regarding women drivers, this comes from a collection of Irish folk tales written around 1920. Seems stereotypes live long.
[quote] They saw a solitary woman in a chariot driving from the west.
“I wonder what that means?” the kind exclaimed.
“Why should you wonder at a woman in a chariot?” his companion inquired, for Crimthann loved and would have knowledge.
“Good my treasure,” Dermod answered, “Our minds are astonished when we see a woman able to drive a cow to pasture, for it has always seemed to us that they do not drive well.”
"Crimthann absorbed instruction like a sponge and digested it as rapidly.
“I think it is justly said,” he agreed.
[/quote]
Now THAT’s funny! 
And I’ve twice not been able to avoid hitting taxis I was passing on the left as they suddenly decided to turn left. You have to indicate and look first (not suggesting you didn’t, but a lot of people don’t).
Mirror - signal -manouevre, mirror - signal - manouevre. That was the mantra when I learned to drive (in the UK).
Yes, I’m quite sure that an awful lot of accidents that happen here are because people don’t use their mirrors. And am I alone in being the only scooter rider who looks behind him too, when pulling out? That one was called the “life saver” by my motorcycle instructor.
You’re not alone. I was taught to never trust my mirrors - to always do a shoulder check. Words to live by. Literally.
I told a Taiwanese friend about the ‘lifesaver’ look over shoulder. She looked shocked and said ‘Oh no, you should never do that. It might make you crash’.
Yeah my Taiwanese scooter “teacher” told me that too. I guess that is taught here.
I remember someone telling me that 98 percent of all crashes come from the front, so the front is worth the lion’s share of your attention. If you’re travelling at speed, then things in front of you are by definition the greatest danger. People here are taught to look ahead, not behind or even to the side, and so everyone drives that way.
Well that’s one argument, but even if you’re looking ahead and the guy in front of you moves over without looking behind, then bang!
I bet that a lot of those accidents from “in front” actually mean one vehicle ramming into the back of another. People playing with their car stereos or mobiles is a common cause, and now we have TVs in cars to contend with!
Still, at least the daily road madness we see can serve as a reminder to be ultra vigilant.
I have a Taiwanese friend who told me that she has her motorbike mirrors positioned so that she can check her face with one mirror, and her tummy with the other…
She also doesn’t stop at minor intersections… because she’s “lucky”. 
Amazingly, she’s never crashed! I wish I had some of that luck. I’m tired of finding new scratches on my bike (courtesy of other drivers).
The Big Babou
Um … so what you are saying is that 98% of all accidents are head-on collisions? I don’t think so. Most accidents are rear-enders and for everyone with a “crash from the front” there’s another with a “crash from the rear.”
Defensive driving is what is lacking here in Taiwan, and knowing the positions of vehicles in front, to the sides and to the rear is part of that driving strategy, along with an understanding of what separation you should have from the vehicles in front in various driving conditions.
Drivers here just don’t seem to understand the laws of physics. Anyway aren’t Asian drivers ridiculed in the US just as much as women drivers?
The first thing any self-respecting Taiwanese scooter monkey does is rip the mirrors off his 50cc anyway. Pootling about town is one thing. Blatting down a B road at 80 or 90 mph is quite a different kettle of fish. There’ll be plenty of pavement pizza once the big bikes go on sale.