Taichung’s Second Police Precinct conducted three days of around-the-clock roadside sobriety testing earlier this week, as part of the city government’s efforts to toughen up on drunk drivers.
The operation netted four motorists suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI), as officials warned drivers against taking cars and scooters on the road after consuming alcoholic beverages at banquets or going out drinking with coworkers, officials said.
The precinct had five police units rotating day and night at certain street locations to administer sobriety tests from Sunday to Wednesday, it said.
Photo: Copy by Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
Although six motorists were suspected of drinking and driving, only four were found to have an alcohol reading over the legal limit of 0.15 milligrams per liter (mg/L) after being given a Breathalyzer test.
The three-day crackdown came after three accidents involving drunk drivers earlier this month, which resulted in four deaths and one person being severely injured.
The most severe of the three accidents occurred in Taichung’s Longjing District (龍井) on Sunday, when a driver surnamed Tsai (蔡), 34, provided a ride to two friends and drove the car into a semi-trailer parked on the roadside.
Tsai and his friend, surnamed Lai (賴), who was also seated in front, later died of their injuries at a local hospital, while the passenger in the back seat remains in critical condition due to a severe head injury.
Local police took blood samples, which indicated that Tsai, a restaurant cook, had a blood alcohol level of 1.1 mg/L.
Another accident involved a Chinese tourist who was killed last Saturday when he was out walking in Kinmen (金門) and got hit by a drunk driver.
The third accident also happened on Sunday, when a newspaper deliveryman on a scooter in Tainan was killed by a driver surnamed Ma (馬).
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods