The days when one could ace the motorcycle license test after practicing a few times may soon be a thing of the past, if draft regulations requiring applicants to complete a driver’s education course before they can take the motorbike exam are implemented.
Under the proposed changes, a new driver would have to pay NT$3,000 to take a three-day driver’s education course before being eligible to apply for a motorcycle license, for which they must pass a written exam and a road test.
The draft regulations would also make passing an additional road test a prerequisite for obtaining a motorcycle license.
Currently, those licensed to drive a car are not required to take a separate test to be approved to drive “light motorcycles” — those with engines no larger than 50cc.
The motorbike road test is also set to be made more challenging under the proposed regulations, which are expected to take effect by the end of this year.
The changes would also require motorcyclists employed by food delivery and dispatch companies to take safety lessons each year.
Three major local manufacturers of motorcycles and scooters have said that they will pay one-third of the NT$3,000 fee that unlicensed riders who purchase a new vehicle would have to pay for the driving course.
The reforms were proposed after Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) put the prevention of fatal traffic accidents at the top of the ministry’s agenda.
Statistics show that one-third of the 853 people killed in motorcycle-related accidents last year were aged between 18 and 29.
In the three years to April last year, a total of 1,337 people in that age group died in motorcycle-related deaths.
Last year, 853 people died in accidents involving at least one motorcycle, accounting for 44 percent of traffic-related deaths. However, that figure is the lowest recorded over the past nine years.
Motorcycles and scooters are by far the most commonly used vehicles in Taiwan, with 15 million of them in use among the nation’s 23 million population.
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
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,
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