Twenty-two people, mostly Chinese tourists, were injured yesterday when their tour bus hit an overpass in Kaohsiung, the Tourism Bureau said, adding that none of the injuries were life-threatening.
The accident occurred when the bus — carrying 28 people, including the driver, a tour guide and 26 tourists from China’s Zhejiang Province — tried to drive through a railway underpass that was too low for the vehicle, the bureau said.
The local fire department said seven of the injured were children, adding that they sustained minor injuries.
Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
The tourists were on a six-day trip that began on Wednesday.
The driver’s unfamiliarity with local streets and lack of alertness might have caused the accident, police said.
The driver, a Kaohsiung resident who has three years of driving experience, said he did not know that the underpass had a height limit of 2.8m, less than the height of the bus, because he had never traveled on that road before and was distracted by the tour guide when the accident took place, according to police.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
The driver said he was neither drunk nor tired at the time of the accident.
China’s National Tourism Bureau paid close attention to the incident and called for greater security safeguards for Chinese tourists in Taiwan, China’s Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
The accident came months after one of Taiwan’s most serious tour bus accidents involving Chinese visitors, when a bus carrying 24 members of a Chinese tour group and a Taiwanese tour guide en route to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport crashed into a freeway guardrail and burst into flames.
Everyone aboard, including the driver, was killed in the incident on July 19 last year as the emergency doors could not be opened.
Prosecutors concluded that Su Ming-cheng (蘇明成), the bus driver who had immigrated from China, deliberately set fire to the vehicle because he was upset over family pressure and was being sentenced to prison in a sexual assault case.
Additional reporting by Reuters
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique