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Letter: A solution to traffic chaos

There is perennial criticism about the state of the traffic in Taipei, and the criticism is often based on the fact that drivers seem unable either to a) interpret basic civilities like not careering through red lights, b) believe that traffic laws are for reference, rather than something to be obeyed, or c) to consider the rights of pedestrians as, at best, subservient to those of the car owner, if they even recognize the right of the pedestrian to not be mown down at all.

These problems are often explained by foreign scholars of Chinese history in terms of the Taiwanese belief in the Confucian system: That one's obligations lie firstly to oneself, and then to one's family, one's friends, one's boss and one's boss's family and so on, on a sliding scale, though not necessarily in that precise order. As long as one is not maiming one's own social network, cavalier attitudes towards traffic rules and general morality are, under the Confucian system, not important. The need to get wherever one is going as quickly as humanly possible, as if one were delivering a kidney for transplant and not merely popping out to rent a DVD, clearly takes precedence.

I believe that this analysis is unfair, and rather that Taiwanese drivers suffer by having to obey an outdated and impractical system of meaningless traffic bureaucracy inherited from the Martial Law era. Clearly, this situation irks foreigners and quite possibly non-car-owning Taiwanese too. So, I would like to propose a solution to the problem.

President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) government's ideology and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) city politics are both in favor of a more internationalized system based on egalitarian and liberal democratic principles.

I therefore urge Chen and Ma to start by reforming the traffic system along the lines of their attempts to welcome foreigners to the city, by adopting a fairer and more participatory system of traffic laws.

Under my proposal, the repressive martial law-era system of stop signs, red lights and intersections would be replaced by a more people-centered approach which empowers citizens to use their own judgement instead of having to follow archaic systems of law and order in traffic management.

Rather than having to obey the inconvenience of every single red light, yield sign, or right of way, it would be far easier to allow citizens to take turns in their obligations.

If one stopped at a red light at the last intersection, one would be free to go right through the next one without looking. If one yielded, or gave way, to a vehicle at the previous junction, it would be one's democratic right to shoot straight through the following intersection. If one had allowed a crowd of pedestrians to cross at the last crossing, one should unthinkingly accept that the next group of pedestrians would stop for him.

I feel sure that this would assist Taipei's status as an international city as well as clarify existing anomalies in traffic law.

In addition, it's basis in egalitarianism and liberal democratic principles would surely allow both Ma and Chen to find common ground on which to discard their political animosity; and discard it in the gutter, or the local park, as is their democratic right, and not in a waste-bin which is clearly a hangover from martial law.

This would allow them to push forward their common pro-Taiwanese cause, which would surely benefit Taiwan's claim to be a legitimate sovereign nation.

Gareth Price
Taipei
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