I’d like to say Taipei, because it’s streets are plagued by the likes of me, but Taichung is just a mess. I’ve probably been there 10 times over the last four years and I’ve never spent a weekend there without seeing at least one collision. One time it rained and I saw three accidents in a day - one of them being a four car pile up. What the hell is wrong with Taichung drivers??
- Radar speed traps don’t work in significant rain.
- Cops run for cover at the first drop from the sky.
- All of Taichung knows about 1 and 2 and decides they can get home faster by speeding and running red lights.
I vote taichung.
Its my personal race track 
But i stop at traffic lights unlike 90% of the f**kers here, in fact they nearly fly into the back off me when i do and sometimes even honk at me for obeying the law!.
Nothing can top Taipei for variety of car tricks, of both the stop and go types. Nowhere do you have the concentration of impatience and congestion with “no exit”. Rats in a cage, in motorcyclisto lingo.
Could the Hsinchu Science Park be included in the poll? 
Because if you drive faster you won’t get so wet. Didn’t you know? :eh:
Because if you drive faster you won’t get so wet. Didn’t you know? :eh:[/quote]
Y’know, I think you are right with this. I do believe that everyone in Taiwan who has a car used to ride a scooter before they got into that first car. I think a lot of the survival tactics they picked up on two wheels are never unlearned. Like the tendency to drive a car in the motorcycle lane, or speed up when it rains. I’m just waiting to see someone driving a car in the rain with one hand on the wheel and the other one holding an umbrella. Then I’ll know for sure.
Hmmm…didn’t Myth Busters bust that one? Running only got you wetter.
But I agree about the "scooter thought’ driving. It’s funny to watch a Merc. being driven like a 50cc Dio.
Taiwan soooo badly needs a Myth Busters show… but I fear that anyone doing such a thing would be burned at the stake for questioning all those old-wives’ tales.
hard to say each place has its own problems.
for me taipei is the most intense place to drive. im on high alert when ever i drive there, especially during traffic hours. crazy scooters (taichung use to have a lot i think they moved to taipei lol) and damn those bus drivers and taxi. i pretty much have to drive 100% aggresive to hold my own. granted up north people do follow most basic traffic laws. unlike taichung or other places. it’s easier to drive but be weary of law breakers and people who think they own the road. then some cities its hard to drive due to lighting or signs and even with a GPS it’s still hard to figure chit out.
can u vote all outside of taipei? u got to love those lanes u have to cross the intersection at a angle becuase it vears left or right and no one holds there lane. gotta love those city planners. gawd they forgot there bi focals or something lol.
u see so hard to vote :blah:
Students cycling slowly five abreast in car lanes, scooters shooting out of nowhere against red lights, people sitting there when there’s a green right-turn arrow, traffic circles with confusing traffic light systems… yes, it’s Tainan. Wonderful city, dreadful traffic.
Taichung has to be the worst…it’s just bad in every way. I just wonder who the hell does the planning for the garbage trucks to be collecting garbage along major roads during morning rush hour?..not to mention the kamikaze taxi drivers! I guess lots of this also applies to other big cities in Taiwan but I can’t help but feel that Taichung wants to be the worst at everything!
I think Taichung’s worst transportation ‘feature’ is that most of the tow trucks stop working at 8pm and just two are left to handle the whole city. I have literally seen someone pull up outside their destination, look around for a parking spot within five paces of the target, see nothing, look at their watch and then just double or triple park.
“After 8pm? Yup. No problem. Park at random.”
What’s particularly annoying and dangerous about this is that a great many of Taichung’s more popular restaurants and tea shops are on street corners and so, especially after 8pm, there are cars parked on the corners of many busy intersections.
Here are some random photos taken at one intersection during the time it took for a quick snack.
Cars park at random, scooters stop on pedestrian crossing, cop is ‘busy’ doing something else… checking plates on parked scooters for hot ones somewhere out of frame.
Well, as long as it isn’t raining. First drop he ducks for cover.
Cop: WTF are you taking photos of?
RW: Anything I fucking like, given that it’s a free country!
Cop: Continues walking AWAY from the Accord parked on the red line right behind him, and into the Family Mart.
I BTW am parked in one of the many open parking spaces not 20m away from this scene. When I leave 15 minutes later the cop is on the other side of the road checking more scooters. The Accord is still there on the red line. The SUV is gone but another car has replaced it.
This is Taichung. There is a traffic cop standing on the corner but you park on the red line anyway 'cos you know damn well he isn’t going to do anything about it. Just don’t park your stolen scooter at that intersection today or you might lose it. Well maybe… if the cop isn’t busy buying more food to stuff his fat face with.
dude dont get me started, the cops here are useless.
I love it in a way and HATE it in others when theres blatant piss taking going on.
Your area aint so bad, go to beitun where the roads are super narrow and busy, people do exactly the same thing and force traffic to squeeze around.
[quote=“smellybumlove”]
Your area aint so bad, go to beitun where the roads are super narrow and busy, people do exactly the same thing and force traffic to squeeze around.[/quote]
For clarification, I don’t live in that area. I know Beitun is worse. I try to avoid it as much as possible and when I do pass through, I don’t hang around to take photos.
Don’t forget ZhongHe and YongHe at rush hour in mornings and evenings…scooter hell.
I’d rate more southern towns in general as worse, as the saying goes ‘red lights are for reference only’.
I have a term for many drivers in Taiwan, when they graduate to driving cars from scooters they carry their old habits with them, resulting in the invention of a new vehicle called a ‘mocar’…looks like a car but drives like a scooter. Mocars can do amazing things like whiz down lane margins which should be too small for them, turn without indicating, overtake on outside lanes, park anywhere and generally slow down and speed up at a moments notice.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
I have a term for many drivers in Taiwan, when they graduate to driving cars from scooters they carry their old habits with them, resulting in the invention of a new vehicle called a ‘mocar’…looks like a car but drives like a scooter. Mocars can do amazing things like whiz down lane margins which should be too small for them, turn without indicating, overtake on outside lanes, park anywhere and generally slow down and speed up at a moments notice.[/quote]
I think there’s a button in most cars for a special feature… ‘motorcycle emulation mode’. I just don’t seem to be able to find it in the manual. Maybe Japanese imports don’t have them?
Just to be contrary, I think the Taichung cops are doing their best with the rules and tools they have. And they are definitely getting a little better. I honestly get the impression that they feel like they are just being dicks by ticketing everyone possible for something that Taiwanese don’t think is a big deal, but they are definitely cracking down when people are obviously taking the piss.
If a sole cop on a scooter sees 20 cars all parked illegally in a row, he is just going to take one look at the situation, think ‘fuck that’, and carry on regardless. What else can he really do? If he tickets 3 cars they will complain that the other 17 got away, if he tickets all 20 he will have a small riot on his hands and get fired by his boss for inconveniencing the local voters.
There is a space behind some legal parking boxes near my office that is marked with a red line and even I have parked there sometimes, but now at 10 or 11pm cars are getting towed from that spot. The old rule about ‘anything goes after 8 in Taichung’ does not necessarily apply any more. A larger number of tow trucks and cops are working up to 1am at least now and roadblocks are getting more serious.
A few days ago I was having lunch and there was a row of double parked cars that got sent packing by a scooter cop. Well three of the guys pretended to get in their cars in a hurry, waited for the cop to leave down the road then just turned off their engines and went back to lunch. The cop circled back around a few minutes later and lost it when he saw the same cars were there, he was super pissed. He got his buddy to block off most of the intersection and ticketed every fucker there. That was pretty funny.
[quote=“llary”]
If a sole cop on a scooter sees 20 cars all parked illegally in a row, he is just going to take one look at the situation, think ‘fuck that’, and carry on regardless. What else can he really do? If he tickets 3 cars they will complain that the other 17 got away, if he tickets all 20 he will have a small riot on his hands and get fired by his boss for inconveniencing the local voters.
…
A few days ago I was having lunch and there was a row of double parked cars that got sent packing by a scooter cop. Well three of the guys pretended to get in their cars in a hurry, waited for the cop to leave down the road then just turned off their engines and went back to lunch. The cop circled back around a few minutes later and lost it when he saw the same cars were there, he was super pissed. He got his buddy to block off most of the intersection and ticketed every fucker there. That was pretty funny.[/quote]
Excellent. I’ll be on the lookout for this sort of thing, though it hasn’t been my impression until now.
The part I bolded is, by the way, the reason I was given by the pound for the tow squad’s softly-softly approach. The mayor had told them not to alienate his electorate by towing their cars.
[quote=“llary”]Just to be contrary, I think the Taichung cops are doing their best with the rules and tools they have. And they are definitely getting a little better. I honestly get the impression that they feel like they are just being dicks by ticketing everyone possible for something that Taiwanese don’t think is a big deal, but they are definitely cracking down when people are obviously taking the piss.
If a sole cop on a scooter sees 20 cars all parked illegally in a row, he is just going to take one look at the situation, think ‘fuck that’, and carry on regardless. What else can he really do? If he tickets 3 cars they will complain that the other 17 got away, if he tickets all 20 he will have a small riot on his hands and get fired by his boss for inconveniencing the local voters.
There is a space behind some legal parking boxes near my office that is marked with a red line and even I have parked there sometimes, but now at 10 or 11pm cars are getting towed from that spot. The old rule about ‘anything goes after 8 in Taichung’ does not necessarily apply any more. A larger number of tow trucks and cops are working up to 1am at least now and roadblocks are getting more serious.
A few days ago I was having lunch and there was a row of double parked cars that got sent packing by a scooter cop. Well three of the guys pretended to get in their cars in a hurry, waited for the cop to leave down the road then just turned off their engines and went back to lunch. The cop circled back around a few minutes later and lost it when he saw the same cars were there, he was super pissed. He got his buddy to block off most of the intersection and ticketed every fucker there. That was pretty funny.[/quote]
Sure…when the cop says ‘fuck that’ and doesn’t ticket every car illegally parked it ends up encouraging those selfish pricks to park their cars wherever and however…because each and every other person who is legally parked is almost sure to get an invitation to pay for parking by those ‘meter maids’…that’s the problem…a single cop can only handle so much at a time…if there are 20 illegally parked cars on a street, then he starts with the first one and makes his way back…just like those meter maids do when handling legal parking invitations to pay…sometimes, I’m lucky to return to my car just as the meter maid was 2 cars down from mine…free parking…but most of the time, they get me and even though I’ve only parked for 10 minutes, I have to pay the 20$NT for the first hour…the point being…cops should just get on with their job and not worry about people’s bitching…it’s not right that people who are legally parked have to pay (no matter how small the parking fee is) and selfish ass clowns do as they wish and get away with it…the meter maids don’t have a problem doing their jobs…what’s the cops excuse?