A total of 65 deaths occurred within 24 hours of a traffic accident last year in Taipei, the lowest rate in 20 years, the Taipei Department of Transportation said yesterday.
That was a nearly 27 percent decrease from the 89 deaths in 2016, the agency said, but added that small vehicles, with 29 deaths, still caused the greatest number of fatal accidents.
Only about 2 percent of the fatal accidents were caused by drunk driving, the agency said.
Photo: CNA
Of the 65 people that died, 30 were motorcycle riders or passengers, 28 were pedestrians, three were car drivers or passengers, three were cyclists and one was a truck driver or passenger, it said.
Last year, motorcyclist deaths were spread across three age groups: 18 to 25-year-olds (five people), 40 to 49-year-olds (seven people) and 50 to 59-year-olds (five people), the agency said.
In previous years, more than 70 percent of motorcyclist deaths were concentrated in the 18 to 25-year-old group, it added.
Pedestrian deaths were concentrated among those older than 65 (20 people), the agency said, adding that deaths in the car driver or passenger category and cyclist category did not show clear trends.
A total of 28,773 people were injured in the 37,690 traffic accidents that were recorded last year, the department said.
Last year, the department reviewed locations that easily led to accidents or deaths, but also mailed traffic safety pamphlets to the residences of those older than 75, the agency said when asked why the number of accidents had decreased.
The department said it also held forums targeting motorcyclists in the 18 to 25-year-old group at colleges and universities.
It also implemented an ad hoc law enforcement plan to strengthen the use of speed cameras and mobile speed controls for motorcycles at times and locations that motorcyclists were likely to cause accidents, it added.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications uses deaths within 30 days of traffic accidents, rather than deaths within 24 hours, as the standard for its statistics on fatalities and injuries caused by traffic accidents.
The numbers for the whole of last year are still being calculated, the department said, but added that from January to October, 118 deaths occurred within 30 days of a traffic accident, which is still a decrease compared with the 161 deaths in 2015.
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
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,
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