As early as March next year, drivers in vehicles on freeways where rear seat passengers are not wearing seat belts will be fined NT$3,000 (US$92) to NT$6,000.
The measure, which passed its third reading in the Legislative Yuan yesterday as an amendment to Section 31 of the Road Traffic Management and Punishment Law (道路交通管理處罰條例), was sponsored by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Tsiao-long (陳朝龍).
close encounter
On the way to an election campaign event in May last year, Chen's car smashed into a telegraph pole.
"I wasn't wearing a safety belt because I mistakenly thought that sitting in the back seat is safer," Chen said. "If I had been, I would not have suffered such serious damage to my face or shattered my leg."
Since then Chen has campaigned to regulate the mandatory use of seat belts in the rear seat of cars.
The existing laws already require seat belts to be used for the driver and front-seat passenger of the vehicle.
Hu's accident
Chen's amendment was stuck in the legislature's procedure committee until the car crash earlier this month in which Taichung Mayor Jason Hu's (
Hu and Shaw were also on their way to a campaign event, and Shaw was sitting in the rear and not wearing a seat belt.
"I'm very sorry for Shaw's injuries," Chen said. "But her accident made this amendment a priority for lawmakers and it passed into law very smoothly."
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching