An ad hoc team overseeing railway operations within the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said it is considering expanding the use of closed-circuit television (CCTV) inside railway stations to better protect the safety of passengers, adding that it would push for amendments to relevant regulations after the test results are released in June.
The group’s deputy convener, Bureau of High Speed Rail Director-General Allen Hu (胡湘麟), said the group has been searching for ways to enhance the safety of passengers inside train stations, as there have been many cases of passengers either accidentally falling onto railway tracks from platforms, or deliberately jumping onto tracks in suicide attempts.
A 2014 stabbing spree in the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit System, in which four people were killed and 24 others injured, highlighted the need for improved passenger safety, Hu said.
He said the group last year entrusted researchers at the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology with the task of improving CCTV operations, adding that the research team has been conducting trials at Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) Taichung Station since October last year.
Hu said that CCTV installed inside the stations would monitor if passengers move toward the edge of the platforms, and passengers would be warned and asked to move away from the edge once such movement is detected by the surveillance cameras.
If luggage or an item has remained at the same location for a long period of time, the system would treat it as a suspicious item and notify the relevant authorities, he said.
The system would be equipped with a function to detect a stampede or other abnormal movements of crowds inside stations, Hu said, adding that the system would inform police and issue alarms.
He said the system would also be equipped with face recognition technology to help the police identify possible suspects of a crime. To avoid invading the personal privacy of passengers, the police would only use special features of a suspect to filter through camera footage, Hu said.
Asked if CCTV would be installed on THSR trains or trains of the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), Bureau of the High Speed Rail Secretary-General Yang Cheng-chung (楊正君) said the ministry would not ask railway operators to have CCTV installed inside trains as it would involve changing onboard electric circuits.
“We would only ask the railway operators to consider incorporating onboard CCTV systems when they purchase new trains,” Yang said.
Hu said that the team would propose changes to current regulations if test results prove that the measure is feasible, adding that the regulations would apply to both the THSR system and the TRA train system.
In related news, Hu said the qualification test for train drivers would become a national test next year, adding that all train driver licenses would be issued by the ministry.
Currently, the ministry is in charge of issuing licenses to high-speed rail drivers, while the TRA trains and issues licenses to its owner drivers.
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