The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said it aims to reduce the deaths from traffic accidents by 3 to 5 percent each year and slow the increase in the number of injuries within two years.
The goal was unveiled in a convention at the Taipei Expo Park yesterday, where central and local government officials pledged to enhance road safety nationwide.
Ministry statistics showed that the nation had more than 20 million registered motor vehicles last year. While the number of traffic fatalities dropped from 3,140 in 2006 to 1,928 last year, the number of injuries caused by traffic accidents exceeded 300,000 each year between 2011 and last year and shows signs of gradually increasing.
The ministry also found that more than 90 percent of the traffic accidents happened because the drivers lacked an awareness of road risks and driving ethics.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) said that though the deaths caused by traffic accidents have dropped significantly, the number of accidents was still higher than in most advanced countries.
“The death or injury of an individual not only affects the person, but also their family and society,” Yeh said. “Reducing traffic accidents should be a goal we need to work on constantly.”
Yeh said the massive road safety campaign would target four groups: motorcyclists, older drivers, cyclists and drivers of special vehicles. The last category includes drivers of tour buses, gravel trucks or large vehicles carrying dangerous items.
“About 70 to 80 percent of the accidents involve motorcycles and one-fourth of the accidents involve the elderly,” Yeh said. “People are shocked and scared when they hear about accidents involving tour buses. Cyclists should observe the traffic rules, too, as there are more of them on the streets.”
Beyond decreasing deaths at a rate of 3 percent or 5 percent per year, the ministry also aims to reduce total fatalities to below 1,500 by 2020.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said that each death in an accident is another tragedy for a family. He described how a conversation he had with a borough warden six months ago helped improve the traffic facilities in the city.
“He told me that his mother passed away last year after being hit by a reckless driver. The cause of the accident was that the traffic signals were blocked by a tree and the driver did not follow the traffic rules either. Instead of becoming passive, the borough warden became more aware of the traffic facilities. I was impressed by what he said in that meeting. We, as government workers, should consider the needs of the people, because we could be held responsible for any tragedy for failing to improve the infrastructure,” Hau said.
Vice Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), a former head of the ministry, said that the number of the deaths had dropped below 2,000 last year, but traffic accidents per capita were three time higher than that of Japan.
He shared a story of how a friend was hit by a car two days ago and died.
“He was a doctor and was all ready for an appointment,” Mao said. “Instead of using the pedestrian crossing, he crossed the street directly from the bus stop near National Taiwan University.”
“Enhancing the road safety is like doing a good deed,” Mao added. “Judging from statistics, we still have a lot of room to improve.”
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS: As China attempted to promote its national image through humanitarian aid, its targets include New Southbound Policy countries, an expert said China’s “vaccine diplomacy,” which has become central to its foreign policy this year, might hamper Taiwan’s efforts to build relations with developing countries, an expert said. “China, as one of the few countries other than the United Kingdom and the United States to have produced a COVID-19 vaccine, will certainly use that as a diplomatic tool,” said Kung Shan-son (龔祥生), an assistant research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Beijing’s major goals in its “vaccine diplomacy” are to promote its national image through humanitarian aid and to solidify its relations with countries that are included in its
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center
RSS