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Lee pledges to refund traffic fines

DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan accuses Mayor Ma Ying-jeou of performing poorly and pledges to do better at a press conference yesterday. PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES

DPP mayoral contender Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday pledged to refund traffic fines to citizens who have been ticketed at "traffic traps" over the past four years.

"These traps are not designed to find drivers who break the law. The signs are ambiguous," Lee said yesterday at a press conference, accusing KMT incumbent Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) administration of using traffic citations to generate money for city coffers.

Lee said that Taipei citizens are burdened with NT$4.4 billion in traffic fines each year.

"And the number of traffic tickets issued by Ma's administration a year is almost three times more than the average of other cities and counties."

"What message does this send? Does it mean that Taipei citizens are more prone to breaking traffic laws than people in other cities and counties?" Lee asked.

According to the information provided by Lee's camp, the "traffic traps" include the intersection at Mingsheng E Road and Huanhe N Road, where drivers are caught by hidden cameras and fined for going beyond the double white lines.

"Take the case of the Huanhe N Road intersection where approximately 107 traffic tickets were issued within 25 minutes," Lee said. "This shows that citizens are complying with traffic laws and that traffic police are doing their job, but it also shows that Ma's administration is poor at management."

Saying that such places need a re-evaluation, Lee pledged that his administration would refund the fines of approximately 2 million traffic tickets that were issued at the "traffic traps" over the past four years under Ma's administration.

Lee also pledged to revoke all the city's red-line zones at non-intersection areas to make it more convenient for drivers to load and unload as well as those who stop at convenience stores.

Ma criticized the proposal.

"If we were to refund the traffic ticket fines, which were issued [by the traffic police] according to the law, then the act of refunding those fines would constitute an illegal act," Ma said.

"In some cases, it might also be an act that could benefit certain special interest groups," Ma said, saying that Lee's accusations were not fair to law-abiding citizens.

Ma then criticized Lee's camp for trying to smear his candidacy by running a ludicrous ad about him.

Ma was referring to an ad in a Chinese-language newspaper that showed him standing next to Sophie Wang (王筱嬋), who had an affair with expelled DPP Legislator Cheng Yu-chen (鄭余鎮).

"I find the ad disagreeable," Ma said. "I think we should try to continue a gentleman's campaign and not smear each other with untruthful ads."

The paper didn't specify who sponsored the ad, but it ran with a caption that said, "Is Sophie Wang Cheng's gift from heaven or Ma's gift from heaven?" -- making an allusion to something Cheng had said when he publicly professed his love for Wang four months ago.

"That photo was taken four years ago when I was running in the 1998 mayoral election," Ma said.
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