I just saw an article in Today’s China Post detailing a new law that requires children under 18kg (or 4 years old) be made to sit in car seats starting June 1st. But because so many parents complained of a lack of space in their backseats to hold 3 car seats for 3 children, the MOTC decided yesterday that the law would only require two children to sit in the car seats and the third could be held by the mother sitting in the backseat.
This seems to be making a big stink around town with parents. One factory worker is angry because his car doesn’t have seatbelts at all in the back seat, so the carseats cannot be attached. Another parent is calling for a boycott of the carseats. Luckily, as of now, the only time a ticket may be issued is if the parents get into a car crash with the kids in the back. phew.
What’s next? Will they make a law that requires parents to put helmets on their children while on a scooter? Or worse yet, a law that prohibits families of 4-6 riding on a single scooter? Damn those laws that protect the children, such a nuisance!
I thought children were supposed to wear helmets on scooters (?) but the usual lack of enforcement applies I guess.
I wish they’d put seatbelts in taxis - front AND back. Most are OK, but in some cases that would at least alleviate some of the sheer terror 
I think it’s standard in most countries to phase in laws like this to give time to people to comply. For example, when they passed the law in the UK to mandate back-seat seatbelts (~10 years ago?) there was an exemption for cars originally built without backseatbelts (and made it illegal to sell a new car without seatbelts in the back).
I guess the normal way in Taiwan is to just enact the law and then phase in when they actually bother to start enforcing it … give it maybe 10-20 years and people may start obeying it 
Incidentally, what’s the implication of the new law for babies in taxis? I’ve had several trips where I’ve been grimly hanging onto my son and praying …
Hi. We’ve put the exact same question to the MOT (Ministry of Transport), their reply was that the law (according to them applicable to kids of up to 12kg body-weight, not 18 as mentioned above) only applies to private cars and mini-vans etc. but not to taxis because they don’t have seat belts … Private taxi- and chauffeur services as often used for trips to and from the airport e.g. also have to comply, it’s just the “yellow” taxis that are exempt. Hope this helps.
By the way, the back-seat seat-belt exemption for “oldtimer” cars is still valid in many countries of the EU, and I know of at least a hand full of EU countries that have car-seat laws, but also excuse taxis from this requirement: UK, Germany & France, probably others. Xpet.
I thought the car-seat rule had been in place since the mid-ninties?
As for the factory worker…Shut up dude, it only costs about 500Nt to put seat belts in the back. When I first got here none of the damn cars had rear seat belts…It’s an easy DIY install. Half the time the belts are there, just tucked under the back seat because no one ever uses them. The last Ford Telstar that I owned didn’t have them either…Quick trip to the junkyard provided a ten year old set still wrapped in plastic for 200NT…They’d never been used.
My daughter came home from the hospital in her car seat, and until the age of 7 NEVER rode without one.
Coming out of a parking lot in Sandpoint Idaho many years ago, I saw an 18 month old girl get ejected from a overhead camper window when the driver was cut off by another vehicle. He couldn’t have been going more than 15 miles an hour when it happened. The toddler was playing on the bed above the cab and shot through the window like a cannon shell, clearing both his hood and the hood of the car that cut him off. I’ll not describe the results here, but it taught me a very vivid lesson on child restraints in passenger vehicles.
Business as usual. Do not lock stable door until horse has bolted.
Was just on the highways during this Mother’s day holiday and I saw a lot of big families in cars that didn’t have enough room for the adults and the children. I can see where the protests are coming from. I have a friend who has a big family and he wants to comply but he just has too many children and too small of a car and no money to buy a bigger car.
Pretty ridiculous about the taxis being exempt, I suppose legislators are worried about protest mobs of angry taxi drivers picketing the Legislature. Someone needs to have some cohones and not be afraid of their re-election. Damn democracy, if this was Singapore or China, they would just make laws without caring what people thought and if the people protested…look out.
So, wait a minute, taxis don’t have seatbelts? Does this mean that car factories in China receive and fulfill orders to build “X amount of model XYZ without seatbelts” from taxi-driving co-ops?
I don’t think so. Why should a yellow Cefiro be different in safety features from a silver one?
I’ll bet for the sake of convenience, taxi drivers either rip out or tuck away the seatbelts in the back seat. But they ought to be there, if a customer wants to use them, child-seat or not. Hey, the buses here have seatbelts on some of the seats, and riding a bus costs far less than taking a taxi.
Back home, where I’m from, where traffic laws are generally obeyed, I used to automatically reach for my seatbelt whenever entering a car. Here, I gave up asking if there were seatbelts a long time ago. 
Aprimo, of course they rip them out or tuck them under the back seat. The cars they are driving are all regular cars. They do it for they think is convienients sake. They think that is more comfortable for the customer as they are not sitting on the seat belts.
[quote=“Feiren”]Well, I’m mildly offended. I’m from a large family (seven kids) that didn’t have much money. We turned out OK. Please keep this kind of opinion to yourself.[/quote]But were you all crammed helmet-less onto a scooter, or did your parents take better care of you ?
We didn’t have scooters of course. But I believe at that time seatbelts were not required, and I don’t remember using one until I was much older. I also rode a bike everywhere without a helmet.
Does someone want to explain where the last dozen posts went?
[Moderator reply: they were moved HERE so the topic of having large families can be properly discussed without being off-topic.]
yeah, I was wondering where that feiren quote came from … !!!
I guess they got ummmm censored?
I really want to curse myself silly…Can I here?
Was on my way to work and stopped at a traffic light. Woman approaches from behind at about 40K. Woman doesn’t notice the 4500 pound SUV in front of her (Me!) and slams into it at speed. Of course her 8 year old son, in the back seat and not wearing a seatbelt, shoots straight over the seat and eats the dash… : :bluemad:
Never should have posted on this thread…Jinxed me.
Happily the boy is ok, and the Bottimobile only needs to straighten out the bush bar in the back…The Ford Vivid that hit me…Well, can you say, accordian? 
Why would you think that? The posts were off topic so they were split off to a new topic.
That shit drives me nuts! My sister-in-law and her husband have always permitted there small boy (1st grade now) to stand in the middle behind the two front seats in the car. They apparently, despite having three MAs between them, have no power of foreseeability.
So are they the first to prosecuted under the new law? You know, when adults get hurt doing stupid stunts there’s a part of me that says, “You dumbass, you deserve it”. If you’ve ever even giggled at the Darwinian Awards you know what I mean. But the poor kids are innocents for chrissakes, give 'em a chance!
We are 1000’s of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in traffic accidents than we are to win the lottery. Yet everyone spends money they can’t afford on tickets and drives like a nutcase…
I have often wondered if Taiwan publishes data on road fatalities/injuries. Has anyone ever seen such a report? I was astounded by a recent news report in Thailand detailing the number of accidents on their highways during SongKran. I would consider driving conditions in Taiwan to be far worse and have never heard of any large number of deaths or accidents. [/i]
Official statistics indicate 2,718 traffic deaths in Taiwan in 2003. Divided by a population of 22.6 million, the rate per 100,000 is 12.0.
npa.gov.tw/eg/engxls/deaths-i.xls
The Economist recently published a chart showing the traffic death rate per 100,000 people for various countries. I don’t have the chart right here, but I think the rate for most of Western Europe was below 10.0, and the US rate was around 15.0.
Interestingly, the number of deaths has been decreasingly steadily in the last three years, from 3,388 in 2001 to 2,861 in 2002 to 2,718 last year.
Unless those kids are doing a hell of a job balancing themselves on the scooters, apparently it’s not as dangerous as it looks.