The legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday slashed NT$2 million (US$65,187) from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications fiscal 2020 budget and froze another one-tenth, citing a lack of perceivable results in its attempts to improve road safety.
The ministry has allotted hundreds of millions of dollars each year to promote road safety, but the death toll from traffic accidents has been steadily growing since 2017, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
The last traffic order and safety project, the 12th of its kind, aimed to cut the number of people killed by traffic accidents by 500 over three years, or an annual drop of 5 percent, the committee said.
On a monthly basis, mortality and injury rates in 2016 stood at 2,849 and 402,701, or 3.26 percent and 1.51 percent higher respectively compared with 2015, the committee said.
Mortality and injury rates from traffic accidents in 2017 stood at 2,700 and 393,046, or 5.23 percent and 2.40 percent higher respectively when compared with 2015, the committee said.
Last year there was a 2.96 percent and 8.59 percent increase respectively in mortality and injury rates to 2,780 and 426,799, the committee said.
In the first half of this year, there had already been 1,407 deaths and 215,984 injuries, or an increase of 3.38 percent and 3.89 percent respectively when compared with 2017, it said.
DPP Legislator Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) said the 13th project aims to reduce the number of deaths and severe injuries to zero, but the ministry has not proposed any policies geared toward realizing that goal.
The committee could not support budgeting a program that could not achieve its stated goal, Cheng said, adding that he was in favor of slashing 20 percent from the ministry’s budget.
Road Traffic Safety Committee Executive Secretary Hsieh Ming-hung (謝銘鴻) said that the elderly comprised the majority of the traffic-related deaths.
Of the 2,780 deaths last year, 40 percent were elderly individuals, while 50 percent of those were riding scooters in areas outside of the six special municipalities, he said.
With an aging society, Hsieh said that such incidents would become more common.
There is a spike in scooter-related deaths in August each year – the month before the new academic year and when many teenagers receive their first scooters, Hsieh said, adding that the ministry has taken note of the trend and would be focusing its efforts on lowering the number of such incidents.
The ministry has isolated accident hotspots in 22 counties and cities based on data from 2014 to last year, Hsieh said, adding that the ministry would collaborate with local governments and target those areas from 2021 to 2023.
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
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,
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