The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) is considering a proposal to prosecute fatal drunk driving offenses as intentional homicide, in a bid to reduce the number of fatal accidents caused by drunk drivers.
Under the proposal, drunk driving suspects with a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of at least 0.75 milligrams per liter (mg/L) would be charged with murder, regardless of whether they had been involved in road accidents.
Other measures under consideration include immediate work termination for public officials and civil servants caught driving over the legal limit, increased penalties and fines, and raising the maximum punishment to life in prison or a death sentence for those involved in accidents causing death.
Photo: Tang Shih-ming, Taipei Times
The proposed amendments would also include charges of offenses against public safety for drivers who tested below the 0.75mg/L BAC threshold, but still above the legal limit.
The 0.75mg/L delineation was based on research and published papers by Tsai Chih-chung (蔡中志), a professor at the Department of Traffic Science at the Central Police University in Taoyuan.
According to Tsai’s studies, drivers with 0.75mg/L of blood alcohol were 25 times more likely to cause an accident when behind the wheel.
“I wholly support the effort by the Ministry of Justice to set harsher punishments at 0.75 mg/L. When people reach this level, they would be severely drunk, which would significantly lower their reaction time,” Tsai told reporters yesterday.
“If they insist on driving, it would easily result in accidents,” he said.
He added that the 0.75 mg/L level would be an average person in Taiwan consuming five bottles of beer, and they should be held legally responsible for causing fatalities when involved in accidents.
Lawmakers are also pushing for stiffer punishments, such as raising the maximum fine for driving under the influence (DUI) from NT$200,000 to NT$300,000, handing out DUI convictions of a life or death sentence and increasing the prison term by two-thirds if caught for drunk driving again within a 10-year period.
Public outrage has placed pressure on the ministry and government to do something in the wake of more people being killed by drunk-driving incidents in recent weeks, including the deaths of two people earlier this month and three deaths in another DUI case on Jan. 23, both of which occurred in Taichung.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS