The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) yesterday dismissed a media report that said Taiwan has the highest rate of traffic fatalities among the world’s developed countries.
Hsieh Chao-i (謝潮儀), executive secretary of the Road Traffic Safety Committee, said one of the committee’s division chiefs had provided incorrect statistics in a presentation to a forum on Wednesday.
Hsieh gave reporters the latest statistics from the International Road Federation on motor vehicle fatalities in several countries: On average, the number of deaths per 10,000 vehicles in China was 7.92, 3.77 in Canada, 2.52 in France, 2.44 in Singapore, 2.38 in Hong Kong, 1.71 in the US, 1.57 in Italy and 1.56 in Taiwan.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“She [the division chief] volunteered to attend the forum, but she simply cited the wrong information,” Hsieh said.
Hsieh said it was inappropriate to compare the traffic fatality rate in Taiwan with that in European countries and Japan because they do not have as many motorcycles as Taiwan.
“Some of the countries in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam, may also have high death rates,” Hsieh said. “But these countries do not have databases on traffic accidents.”
American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) Director William Stanton said on Tuesday that eating US beef was safer than riding a motorcycle in Taiwan when defending the safety of US beef.
A story published in yesterday’s Chinese-language United Daily News quoted the statistics provided by the division chief of the Road Traffic Safety Committee to back Stanton’s point.
The story said 60 out of 100 traffic accidents in Taiwan were caused by motorcycles, 1.6 times higher than in France.
In 2007, 2,573 persons died in traffic accidents in Taiwan, with 64 percent of fatalities involving motorcycles and scooters.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,