Remember Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind?" In all respect to the songwriter, could we perhaps add a verse for Taipei: How many people must be killed by public buses before the government makes the streets safer?
The Taipei City Bureau of Transportation says that through June of this year 301 people have been injured by city buses and 6 people killed. City records show that over the past eight years, 225 people have been run over and killed by city buses, had their blood spilled on the asphalt while the government looks on (or doesn't, as it would appear).
Last Friday afternoon 61-year-old grandmother saddled her five-year-old grandchild on the front of her Red Pigeon Flyer bicycle and strapped her six-month old grandchild to her back and rode off to the market to buy vegetables. But public bus number 63 cut their journey short. The bus driver was forced to swerve to avoid a double-parked van and rear-ended the trio on the bicycle, sending granny and the older child to the hospital with injuries but ending the young life of the baby.
Our mayor did not show his smiling face at the scene (probably weren't enough reporters), but Taipei public transportation director Su Chongkun (蘇崇昆) said he would investigate who is at fault and hand out the appropriate punishments. What else would you expect him to say? That he would make Taipei traffic safer and build more bus lanes, maybe even, god-forbid, a bike lane?
The police have done a fine job of charging poor, overworked bus driver with criminal contempt, which might be equivalent to condemning a soldier for murder in war, or the Tories scapegoating the squeegee people for the moral degradation of British society in the 1980s. But again, could we expect anything else from the bureaucracy?
Could we expect them to dig at the root of the problem, to enforce traffic laws and implement driver education beyond standardized tests (oblivious Mr Lin didn't even know what he had done by double parking)?
Could we expect them to widen the streets making it safe for bikes and pedestrians to go freely about their way without the threat of being hit by motorized vehicles? I can name half a dozen international cities that do, and have more people per square kilometer than Taipei.
Remember last year when another unfortunate old lady was plowed over by a bus as she crossed the street in a crosswalk with the green light. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) told the family that something must be done. So he condemned the bus drivers. He turned them into criminals, revoked their control over their buses by limiting their speed to 40kph and mounted a big brother video camera to watch their actions.
It didn't change much did it? The young boy on his bike was taken out by number 262 last summer; sixth-grader Cheng Tien-chieh (鄭天傑) crossed off while crossing Jenai Road in May, victim of number 22; and so on.
The summer winds are blowing. Will Taipei officials listen to the answers it carries and make Taipei city streets safer, or will they continue to pretend they just don't see?
Macabe Keliher is a freelance writer.
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