The house of a motorist with multiple driving under the influence (DUI) offenses was repossessed yesterday in line with tougher actions being taken by the judiciary to deter drunk driving.
The repeat offender, surnamed Lin (林), had been issued 11 tickets within three years for allegedly driving his scooter drunk in Changhua County, officials at the Ministry of Justice’s Administrative Enforcement Agency said.
Lin had accumulated NT$900,000 in fines, but refused to pay, they said.
From 2015 to last year, Lin was pulled over numerous times for roadside breath testing after police observed erratic driving behavior, police records showed.
However, he refused to take the test every time, leading to the issuance of 11 tickets for failure to cooperate: eight NT$90,000 tickets and three NT$60,000 tickets, the records showed.
The agency’s branch in Changhua County sent Lin notices about the fines, but he did not pay them or respond to a request to declare his assets, it said.
Agency officials went to Lin’s residence to appraise his possessions, finding that he had discarded his car and scooters, but is the registered owner of a large rural house he inherited from his parents.
The agency yesterday sent officials to repossess the house, but Lin requested they refrain from doing so, citing illness and a lack of income.
Officials reportedly told him that they needed to abide by the law and continued with repossession procedures.
Meanwhile, the ministry touted its measures to prevent drunk driving, saying that within the past month, it has repossessed 67 properties in central Taiwan.
All 67 cases involved motorists who had failed to pay DUI-related fines or refused to submit for Breathalyzer testing, officials said.
For the first and second DUI offenses, a fine of up to NT$90,000 would be issued for scooters and up to NT$120,000 for cars, the ministry said.
For the third offense, NT$90,000 would be added to the fine issued for the second offense, the ministry added.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not