A Keelung resident surnamed Wu (吳) was shocked when he received a speeding ticket and a fine of NT$24,000 from the New Taipei City (新北市) police department for driving at 1,623kph — 1,563kph over the speed limit.
Wu, who received the ticket in the mail on Wednesday, was incredulous when he saw the fine, saying the government was robbing him. A Department of Motor Vehicles staffer said he had never seen anything like the speeding ticket.
Tseng Huan-chang (曾煥彰), the patrol officer in the Ruifang Precinct Traffic Duty Section of the New Taipei City Police Department who issued the ticket, apologized to Wu after he was informed of the issue.
Tseng said a camera caught Wu speeding along the Maoao section of Provincial Highway No. 2. The section of the highway has a speed limit of 60kph, Tseng said, but Wu was driving at 75kph when the speed camera took the photo.
The company that police outsource data input to made a mistake, keying in 1,563kph instead of 15kph over the speed limit, inflating the original NT$1,600 fine to NT$24,000, Tseng said.
The mistake was not spotted, Tseng said, adding that a correct ticket would be mailed to Wu.
Wu said his wife had almost divorced him because of the police department’s mistake, adding that friends who saw the ticket joked that he must have been flying an airplane on the highway.
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert