Taxi Safety

:laughing: :laughing: Is that the first time you’ve ever written “my husband”?

Urrrgghh!!! And the police response is a double urgh!

HG

It’s weird isn’t it :blush: . I’m practicing, you see. Funnily, it’s much easier in Chinese ‘wo de xiansheng’ doesn’t sound so contrived as it does in English!

I’ll get down with it soon, or find a term that sounds more natural! :s

This makes me so angry!!! I’m more angry at the cops than the sicko–at least he’s got an excuse. He’s a sicko. The cops are just ignorant insensitive… *(&%$

Right up there with the taxi driver who reached back and pinched my left nipple three years ago.

Today I was in a taxi with my three children and helper in Tianmu. It was not a physically violent encounter but it was very unpleasant. The guy did not like my pronunciation of ‘left turn’ and ‘right turn’ and kept saying “you don’t know how to say it right.” (That’s what my Chinese-speaking kid tells me he was yelling.) Whatever. He was literally throwing our stuff from the front seat out at my son, which really upset my son and was starting to set him off. I had to remind him that it’s dangerous to yell back at cab driver no matter how mean he’s being and to just forget about the guy.

[quote=“sandman”][quote=“david”][quote=“jdsmith”]Who’s got the number/email of Mayor Ma?

I say flood him with complaints.[/quote]
What about flooding Premier Su with complaints. 2 days ago he announced that he was ‘cracking down on crime’ and would leave politics if things didn’t improve in 6 months.

Example headline from CNA today:
SWEEPING CRIME CRACKDOWN WILL NOT BE EMPTY SLOGANS: MOI
cna.com.tw/eng/cepread.php?id=200603170028

Email to Premier here:
ey.gov.tw/sp.asp?xdURL=mail/ … =210&mp=11
[/quote]
Write him in Chinese. Tell him copies are being kept of all correspondence, which will be forwarded to the most rabid deep blue legislators you can find, as well as TVBS, Apple Daily, etc., if nothing is done.[/quote]

Let’s all send in complaints to the Mayor and Premier. Serious, let’s do it. Now!

[quote=“stan”][quote=“sandman”][quote=“david”][quote=“jdsmith”]Who’s got the number/email of Mayor Ma?

I say flood him with complaints.[/quote]
What about flooding Premier Su with complaints. 2 days ago he announced that he was ‘cracking down on crime’ and would leave politics if things didn’t improve in 6 months.

Example headline from CNA today:
SWEEPING CRIME CRACKDOWN WILL NOT BE EMPTY SLOGANS: MOI
cna.com.tw/eng/cepread.php?id=200603170028

Email to Premier here:
ey.gov.tw/sp.asp?xdURL=mail/ … =210&mp=11
[/quote]
Write him in Chinese. Tell him copies are being kept of all correspondence, which will be forwarded to the most rabid deep blue legislators you can find, as well as TVBS, Apple Daily, etc., if nothing is done.[/quote]

Let’s all send in complaints to the Mayor and Premier. Serious, let’s do it. Now![/quote]

Ma has mine already. Don’t say it, do it.

[quote=“braxtonhicks”]I received a forwarded email about an incident here in Taipei involving a foreign woman, a Taiwanese woman, and a taxi driver.

The woman it happened to has given me permisison to share this online:

[quote]Hi there,

I think some of you might have already heard about what happened, but I just wanted to share it with everyone so that you can be safer. On Monday March 6th at 10:00 pm, a friend and I were returning home by taxi. My friend is a local Taiwanese and she gave the driver directions to our building. We asked the driver several times to turn down the street that we needed to turn on, but he kept driving straight and began screaming at us. She asked him to turn back the way that we needed to go and he became irate. As we came to the next intersection we asked him to please turn left, but he got in the right hand turn only lane. The light turned red and when we were stopped at the intersection he turned around leaned between the seats and was screaming at us. He was screaming “wai guo ren” (which means foreigner) and curse words.

At that point we were really scared and we thought we were in danger so we hurried out of the cab. We ran across the street, dropped the cab fare on the ground and ran away. The driver got out of the cab going towards the money, so we thought we were going to be ok, but the cab driver got back in his car followed us down the street got out of his cab and begun hitting us in the head. He gave my friend a swollen cheek and broke my nose.

We called the police and they took us all to the station. We told them that we wanted to press charges, but they suggested that we just accept the driver’s apology and leave it at that. The police said that this is a very common crime in Taipei and that they thought is was too minor a crime to report. I am still proceeding with the charges, but the taxi driver was released the next day. And they said that it would take at least six months before it would make it to the courts. So the driver is still out there.

The taxi number is 372-DE. Please let your friends know to stay away from this taxi and to be very conscious of their safety while taking taxis here. [/quote][/quote]

unpleasant experience :fume:

braxtonchicks - maybe you could forward this story to the tv reporter ;
syl237@yahoo.com.tw
from the tread - [forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … ter#503586](Maybe a little help from the media?

sorry, don’t know how to make as link… :blush:

The problem with this kind of case is that there often is no way to trace the driver to the car. The drivers rent vehicles, and ones from Taipei County especially don’t ask for ID and of course the police have better things to do than check taxi drivers.

The cops don’t want you your friend to press charges because they have to doa lot of paperwork. Ignore them and insist on pressing charges and tell them you will contact a legislator etc.

[quote=“Feiren”]The problem with this kind of case is that there often is no way to trace the driver to the car. The drivers rent vehicles, and ones from Taipei County especially don’t ask for ID and of course the police have better things to do than check taxi drivers.

The cops don’t want you your friend to press charges because they have to doa lot of paperwork. Ignore them and insist on pressing charges and tell them you will contact a legislator etc.[/quote]

The driver spent the night in a cell, and the women had the car liscense plate number. You’d think that, in this case, knowing who they guy was would be pretty friggin easy.

In that case keep insisting that charges be pressed. Judges here take a very dim view of assault.

This kind of things makes me so angry. If I ever were to see this, I’d probably throw caution into the wind (again) and tear someone in half. But this time, I won’t hold back.

That’s just the thing, though. You’re not so likely to ever see it. Bullies do not bully when someone who might likely intervene is nearby.

At my wife’s stores, there have been several occassions over the past few years where irate customers have abused our workers (high school and college girls)… once a woman and her husband even threw a soda in the face of one of our girls and slapped our girl in the face… I wasn’t there then. Nothing ever happens when I am there.

That’s why its important for the girl who was assualted and battered to press charges and make this very painful for the taxi driver bully.

Yikes, so much for my thread where everyone said how safe Taxi’s were.

Like everyone else, this really pisses me off. I’m tired of being looked at like a zoo animal and having my thoughts disregarded because I’m a foreigner who doesn’t understand.

You just have to be persistant, make them uncomfortable, ask them questions they can’t answer with a positive “MeiShi.” In a country that rarely argues with those who they feel inferior, you just have to out-indimidate them, threaten them, all the while maintaining your composure and pretending as if you’re not upset the slightest bit.

Boy has this country made me bitter…

That’s just the thing, though. You’re not so likely to ever see it. Bullies do not bully when someone who might likely intervene is nearby.

At my wife’s stores, there have been several occassions over the past few years where irate customers have abused our workers (high school and college girls)… once a woman and her husband even threw a soda in the face of one of our girls and slapped our girl in the face… I wasn’t there then. Nothing ever happens when I am there.

That’s why its important for the girl who was assualted and battered to press charges and make this very painful for the taxi driver bully.[/quote]

I’ve been a victim of the bully/mob syndrome here and back home. Unfortunately, in Taiwan I backed down and I was severely hurt in the process. Perhaps I should have backed off completely when I realised honour wasn’t on their agenda.

As God as my witness, if I see something like this again, I will destroy something or someone and run like the wind when I have the upper hand. HA!

I think it’s a good idea for a woman to carry a cameraphone, and when she gets into a cab, playfully take a picture of the driver and email it to a friend or boyfriend. Do the same with the liscense number.

Simple and easy. And it lets the driver know the girl is smart. I see no reason why a girl can’t get away with doing this, this is a picture-taking country.

Marauding taxi drivers? Mei-you guanxi! But whatever you do, Don’t feed the f*cking pigeons!

I’m fairly sure you can still shag 'em though.

I recall the police nabbed a driver of a blue truck that had pulled over off the freeway near Hsinchu to shag an obviously attractive goose. He was later released because they didn’t have any laws to charge him under. I presume that window of endless opportunity is still wide open.

HG

Man am I glad that we always make sure the girls get to their dorm before we go up the mountain! That’s some of the sickest shit ever. But if the police won’t do anything about it… Damn, this guy can do that shit all day, every day.

He did? He’ll lose his job in six months then. I’m not optimistic about it. This isn’t the first time (or second time) when the government said they’d “crack down on crime.” The politicians and government workers or civil servants come from the society. The quality is worrysome and there’s the commitment issue.

Sorry to hear those taxi stories!

cmon JD, people die every day.

Right. They’re way too busy mocking victims of assault and unwanted sexual contact.

To the OP: Have you heard anything else? Are the victims going to press charges despite the police obstructing their efforts?