Safety inspections of the oBike rental service’s bicycles were conducted in China, and the company’s liability insurance is with a Chinese company, raising questions about whether users’ rights would be protected in Taiwan, Taipei City Councilor Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) said yesterday.
The Singapore-based bike-sharing system, which does not use docking stations, was launched in Taiwan in April, and operates in 10 cities and counties.
Local governments have received many complaints about oBikes using public bicycle and motorcycle parking spaces, and there have been reports of oBikes being abandoned in rivers, on coastal tetrapods and on mountain trails.
The Taipei City Government yesterday began to tow illegally parked bikes, and 238 out of the 641 towed yesterday were oBikes, Chen said at a Taipei impound lot.
“OBikes are being left everywhere, so I am very doubtful that the bikes are equipped with a tracking device so the company can locate them,” he said. “We have found them abandoned by the sea and in the mountains because the company did not retrieve them.”
The New Taipei City Government has towed 5,539 oBikes, Chen said, urging the Taipei City Government to deal with the issue.
Chen said he was concerned about oBike users’ rights, because the bicycles’ body integrity inspection reports are from China, as is the firm’s product liability insurance.
Taipei Consumer Services Center Director Ho Hsiu-lan (何修蘭) said oBike has only purchased product liability insurance, so if users are injured due to product defects, they can request compensation from the firm, which is required to deal with such cases.
Neither oBike or YouBike have user or third-party accident insurance, she said.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said the city is discussing how to improve its bike management and that he expects new rules to be implemented by January.
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:
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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