In an effort to crack down on drunk driving next year, a greater focus is to be put on drivers aged 18 to 24, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chi Wen-jong (祁文中) said yesterday.
The government will show zero tolerance for drunk driving instead of just trying to reduce the casualties that result from it, Chi said during a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee in Taipei.
The ministry also intends to implement measures to discourage motorists from driving under the influence of alcohol, Chi said.
For example, the number of hours of correctional classes that those convicted of drunk driving would be required to attend is to be raised from four hours to six, while repeat offenders would have to take 12 hours of classes, instead of six.
According to the National Police Agency, there were 96,676 drunk driving cases in the first 11 months of this year, compared with 100,079 during the same period last year.
A total of 94 lives were lost in traffic accidents related to drunk driving during the 11-month period, 38 fewer than in the same period of last year.
At the legislative meeting, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) proposed amending the Act Governing Punishments for Violations of Road Traffic Regulations (道路交通管理處罰條例) in the next legislative session to stipulate that drunk drivers must help clean the bodies of people killed as a result of them driving under the influence, with consent from the victims’ families.
DPP Legislator Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) also proposed that civil servants caught drunk driving should be referred to the Commission on the Disciplinary Sanctions of Functionaries for punishment.
Currently, with the exception of police officers, civil servant offenders are not always given that punishment, Cheng said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said the ministry would schedule discussions among related authorities about the proposed measure.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS