Foreigners will be able to apply for a local driver’s license after they have lived in Taiwan for six months when amendments to the Road Traffic Safety Rules (道路交通安全規則) take effect before the end of next month, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said.
Current rules stipulate that travelers can use an international driver’s license for 30 days if their home nation has a reciprocal agreement with Taiwan. If they plan to stay for longer, they must apply for a local driver’s license if they want to continue driving. However, to apply for a local driver’s license, the person must be granted permission to stay in Taiwan for at least one year.
Chao Chin-wei (趙晉緯), a specialist at the Department of Railways and Highways, said the rules are to be amended to comply with the National Development Council’s policy of creating a living environment friendly to foreigners.
“Instead of having to obtain permission to stay for at least one year, following the amendment, expats will be able to apply for a local driver’s license if they are granted a stay of more than six months,” Chao said. “The amended rules will also eliminate the clause requiring foreigners to submit an application within one year after their entry date. This means that foreigners can apply for a local driver’s license at any time during their stay.”
The amendments will also affect taxi drivers. They will see the mandatory retirement age for taxi drivers pushed back from 68 to 70. However, drivers who are 68 or older can only renew their licenses if they pass an updated physical examination and a cognitive test proving that they do not have dementia or another mental impairment.
A renewed taxi driver’s license would only be valid for one year, and drivers are to be subject to physical tests every year.
Meanwhile, from Friday the minimum driving speed of the Hsuehshan Tunnel on the Chiang Wei-Shui Memorial Freeway (National Freeway No. 5) is to be raised from 60kph to 70kph.
The National Freeway Bureau said drivers would be given a one-month grace period.
The official crackdown on slow drivers inside the tunnel is begin on April 10, the bureau said, adding that offenders would face fines of NT$3,000 to NT$6,000.
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