Traffic fatalities caused by passengers’ failure to wear seatbelts are increasing, with National Police Agency statistics showing that 52 people have been killed and 245 injured in accidents on freeways since last year.
Thirty-two people were killed in freeway accidents last year as a result of failing to wear a seatbelt, the same number as in 2012 and 2013, according to the agency, which warned that the number of casualties this year could potentially exceed last year if nothing is done to ensure car passengers wear seatbelts.
As of last month, 20 people had been killed and 90 injured this year as a result of not wearing a seatbelt at the time of an accident, agency statistics showed.
Previously only car drivers and front-seat passengers were required to wear seatbelts.
Since February, 2012, backseat passengers have also been required to wear seatbelts, following an amendment to the Act Governing the Punishment of Violation of Road Traffic Regulations (道路交通管理處罰條例) in 2011.
Since August 2012, children aged between four and 12 have been required to wear seatbelts while sitting in the back seat of vehicles, with parents required to purchase booster seats for children if seatbelt straps rub against their neck.
However, legal requirements have failed to prevent fatal accidents.
Last month, a crash involving a sports utility vehicle on Freeway No. 3 killed six people and injured one after one of its tires burst, causing the vehicle to flip over and fall off a 10-story-high overpass.
The police found that five of the six passengers were not wearing seatbelts when the accident occurred.
A similar accident occurred on Freeway No. 1 last year, in which two people were thrown out of a car after the vehicle hit barriers on the freeway and overturned.
An investigative report last year by the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) found that taxi drivers rarely remind passengers to wear seatbelts in their vehicles.
An image circulated on the Internet showed that some drivers even wore a “safety-belt shirt,” featuring a black stripe drawn across the front of the shirt, to avoid penalties.
Commenting on the rising number of deaths caused by vehicle passengers not wearing seatbelts, the police said that it might be related to the fact that police crackdown efforts were hampered by the removal of toll booths on freeways after the introduction of a distance-based electronic toll-collection system.
According to the agency, freeway toll stations were a convenient location to spot traffic violations, because drivers would need to stop to pay toll fees.
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,