The government should follow the examples of Japan and South Korea and form a committee to investigate railway and aviation accidents, a transportation official said yesterday.
Bureau of High Speed Rail Director-General Pang Jia-hua (
Pang made the remarks after the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission presented a draft of an investigative act for aviation and railway accidents.
The commission proposed that an aviation and railway accidents investigative committee be established under the administration of the Aviation Safety Council.
The council is primarily responsible for investigating aviation accidents which result in major casualties.
Though the Railway Law (鐵路法) regulates railway operations, the commission said that the law might not be adequate in dealing with safety issues arising from the high speed rail, which operates at speeds up to 300kph.
As a result, the council proposed that the commission be made responsible for the investigation of high speed rail accidents.
In related news, the Bureau of High Speed Rail approved a Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) proposal to offer unreserved seats to passengers at a 7 percent discount.
Pang said the proposal also did away with the requirement for passengers to arrive at the platforms at least two minutes before boarding.
The bureau asked the THSRC to inform the public about the discounted tickets for at least a week before introducing them, Pang said.
Posters would be displayed on the platforms to inform passengers which cars had been designated for unreserved seats, he said.
Meanwhile, train commuters traveling between Keelung and Jhongli (中壢) will be able to use EasyCards in Taiwan Railway Administration stations from March, Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications Ho Nuan-hsuen (何煖軒) said.
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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