With the popularity of smartphones and dashboard cameras, people are becoming increasingly active in reporting traffic violations. In the special municipalities, the number of fines for reported traffic violations was more than 1.5 million between January and August last year, and the number has continued to increase, to the extent that it is actually becoming a burden for administrative courts.
The National Police Agency (NPA) requires that police first try to persuade people who have breached traffic rules when dealing with “minor” offenses rather than report cases directly.
However, officers are often concerned about being accused of sweeping reported offenses under the carpet and, given the time and energy-consuming process of verifying a traffic offense, almost all reported cases are dealt with through fines, with persuasion being overlooked.
Statistics show that the top three traffic offenses are illegal parking, not following road markings and running a red light. It is believed that a fine would make most people reflect and alter their behavior, but many people feel they have been unfairly singled out when they receive a traffic ticket, given the multitude of violations. These people often join the ranks of traffic offense informants.
Taiwan’s roads are not only unfriendly places, they are downright dangerous, due to mixed traffic flow as well as the mixed use of residential and commercial areas.
To improve traffic, it is important to conduct a thorough review, taking into account three major factors: people, vehicles and the roads. The nation should also carry out better traffic management, using the “three E’s”: engineering, education and enforcement.
First, engineering: The nation needs to explore whether traffic planning is up to the task. For example, if the supply of parking spaces in a given area falls far short of the demand, then people can expect serious issues with illegal parking, just as they can expect frustrated pedestrians to violate the rules if the deployment of traffic lights does not make sense.
If traffic planning is improved, coupled with a of community-based traffic instruction program and the appropriate enforcement of the traffic rules, the situation would hopefully improve.
This would foster a virtuous cycle in traffic management that should bring the number of traffic offenses down and introduce some order to the roads, thereby reducing the risk of accidents.
It is important for central and local government authorities to conduct an ex-ante and ex-post analysis of the situation to ascertain why traffic offenses have not decreased, why traffic flow has not improved appreciably and why traffic accident incidence rates remain high, despite the increasing number of reports of traffic offenses in the past three years.
Second, education: The government should conduct a retrospective analysis of all reported traffic offense hotspots, and look at signage and provisions in the surrounding area.
For example, it should assess whether there are too many of red lines prohibiting temporary parking and whether it makes sense to permit parking in such areas from 8pm to 7am.
It could also assess whether there are sufficient traffic lights in the area, whether there are enough lanes for left or right turns and whether the two-stage left turns for motorcycles are in places that improve safety.
The increase in the number of reported traffic offenses had some unfortunate effects over the past three years, one of which is the creation of vengeful informers, upset about being reported themselves, who have set about excessively informing on others in revenge, which has caused tensions and created problems in communities.
The government should look into ways to make enforcement more forgiving to avoid feelings of ill-will against officers.
The government should also educate the public about traffic management and encourage people to get involved in the process by responding to traffic offenses as they happen, and have local community management offices intervene and deal with breaches on the spot to remove impediments to traffic flow or safety.
If those responsible for an offense refuse to cooperate, they should be reported.
Third, enforcement: The NPA should reinforce officers responsible for dealing with traffic offenses, and look into regulations and mechanisms for addressing minor violations, suggest changes, and clarify and standardize procedures so that officers are not accused of sweeping violations under the carpet. This would go a long way to addressing the misconception that every offense must be fined.
Finally, a form of traffic offense accumulated points system should be introduced, in which the number of individual cautions are recorded and, when this reaches a designated threshold, a fine, or perhaps even a license suspension, should be given.
However, fines should be regarded as no more than one measure. The focus should remain on improving the traffic situation.
Lee Ker-tsung is an associate professor in Feng Chia University’s transportation technology and management department.
Translated by Eddy Chang and Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this