Taiwan yesterday signed two joint declarations of intent with Germany to cooperate on land transport issues and road safety activities.
The declarations were signed at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications by Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) and German Institute Taipei Acting Director-General Sabrina Schmidt-Koschella.
The signing was witnessed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kelly Hsieh (謝武樵), Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材), and German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure State Secretary Steffen Bilger.
Wang said in a statement that Germany is one of the leading developers of self-driving vehicles, from which the nation can learn.
The government only allows autonomous vehicles to operate in five pre-approved testing grounds nationwide, he said.
The nation has three research teams working on autonomous vehicles, focusing on studying and testing autonomous mini-buses, commercial vehicles and medium-sized buses, Wang said.
A German delegation visited the Industrial Technology Research Institute to see self-driving medium-sized buses undergo tests, he added.
“The government will in the future allow self-driving cars to hit the road. We hope that the technology can help reduce traffic accidents across the nation, enhance road safety and reach the goal of zero traffic casualties,” Wang said.
The declaration on land transport issues covers cooperation in areas such as exchanging information on motor vehicle policies and regulations; matters related to autonomous vehicles; requirements for periodic technical inspection of motor vehicles; traffic and road designs; intelligent transport systems; railway policies and standards; road infrastructure policies; standard operating procedures for incident management for railways, roads and tunnels; and the development and operation of cross-border vehicle tolls and other fees from local and foreign-registered vehicles.
Cooperation on matters related to self-driving cars would focus on “policies, regulations, standards, testing, insurance requirements, incident investigation and reporting requirements, claims, data and data privacy and public acceptance” related to such vehicles.
The declaration on road safety states that Taiwan and Germany “are characterized by their exceptionally high standards in fields relevant to road safety,” adding that both seek to cooperate in several fields, such as the investigation of road transport incidents and accidents; exchange of scientific findings on road accident causes and prevention; reciprocal discussion and coordination of road accident prevention measures for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists; and exchange of information on measures taken in response to the challenges arising from the increasing number of elderly road users.
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:
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