Government agencies have reached a consensus to raise the penalties for drunk driving, including preventive detention, to help curb traffic accidents, the Executive Yuan said.
The decision to revise the law was reached by the ministries of justice, transportation and communications, defense and the interior, and the Department of Health in a recent meeting convened by Minister Without Portfolio Luo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪).
A proposal will be sent to the legislature to amend Article 185-3 of the Criminal Code, Article 54 of the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces and Article 114 of the Act Governing the Punishment of Violations of Road Traffic Regulations (道路交通管理處罰條例), the Cabinet said.
A proposed amendment to Article 101-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法) would allow law enforcement officials to detain people driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), the Cabinet said.
Under the proposed revisions, drivers with breath alcohol levels of between 0.15mg and 0.2 mg, or blood alcohol levels of between 0.03 percent and 0.04 percent, could be fined between NT$15,000 and NT$90,000 and have their driver’s licenses suspended for a year.
Drivers who record 0.25mg or higher on a breathalyzer test, or have blood alcohol levels of 0.05 percent and over, will be put into preventive detention and could be sentenced to up to two years in prison and a maximum fine of NT$200,000, the proposal states.
Drivers found culpable in DUI accidents that cause injury to others could be sentenced to between six months and five years in prison, according to the proposal. In a DUI incident that results in death, the sentence would be from one to seven years in prison, the proposal said.
At present, drivers who test in the 0.25mg to 0.55mg range on breathalyzer tests are fined, while those who test above 0.55 mg are charged under the Offenses against Public Safety Act (公共危險罪).
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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