Amendments to the Unified Standards on Handling Traffic Regulation Violations and Fines are to hold people who report traffic violations accountable, which would help with court proceedings, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said on Saturday.
The amendments are to take effect on Jan. 1, the ministry said.
Last year, 1.69 million traffic violations were reported by members of the public, accounting for 16 percent of all such reports, with illegal parking being the No. 1 issue, comprising 60 percent.
There has been an increase in reports, but many contain insufficient information, making them difficult to process, the ministry said, adding that some reports are made to get revenge, while others are made by people because people expect a reward.
Some violations generate as many as 30 reports, which adds to the workload of police offices that are already understaffed, it said.
Furthermore, anonymous reporting prevents courts from calling witnesses, it said.
To address the issue, the ministry said it has amended Article 20 of the regulations to demand that all reports be accompanied by proof of identity and contact details.
The amendments would allow courts to summon the person who made the report to give testimony, the ministry said, adding that this would help with legal proceedings.
A third item added to Article 20 would institute a seven-day time limit on reporting, the ministry said, adding that reports would be dismissed if the tipper fails to provide evidence or give a statement within seven days.
The amendments also removed a provision to Article 23 to allow authorities to disregard anonymous reports, the ministry said.
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
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
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,