In light of the growing number of traffic fatalities involving bicycles, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications is planning to amend a road law to require that cyclists wear helmets or face fines.
In a meeting presided over by Minister Tsai Duei (
This has prompted researchers from the ministry's Institute of Transportation to propose an amendment to the road safety law to require that cyclists wear safety helmets, the officials said.
In addition, the amendment would require that left turns be conducted in two steps by cyclists riding on roads, that cyclists ride within 1m of the edge of the road, and that bicycle makers be required to install lights and reflecting panels on new bicycles, the officials said.
Ministry officials quoted tallies compiled by the National Police Administration indicating that between 2003 and last year, traffic accidents involving bicycles resulted in 664 deaths and 7,131 injuries. Of the 664 killed, 483 -- or 72 percent -- died after being hit by a vehicle and falling.
Last year alone, 183 cyclists died in traffic accidents, with 118 of the deceased having died of head injuries, the officials said.
Researchers from the ministry's Institute of Transportation are expected to present a draft amendment to the road safety law by the end of this year with stricter safety regulations for cyclists, including the required wearing of helmets.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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