Public safety being ignored
I am shocked at many public safety issues that are ignored in Taiwan that should not be considered the result of cross-cultural differences.
As I look for places for my children to run, jump, skip, ride bikes and just be kids, I find no safe haven for them. There is a wonderful park across the street from where we live. I cannot count the times I have taken the children to the park, only to find cars, trucks and motorcycles racing through it. The drivers go too fast, come too close and do not belong in a park. I understand that garbage trucks must drive through the park to collect trash. Why must this be done, however, at 9am or 10am when so many children are out?
One reason we chose the area where we now live is because it was new. They seem to tear up all the sidewalks regularly, however, and park work trucks on them. This forces you to walk in the street, a very unsafe place to have a child in a stroller or on a bike.
Lastly, look at the helmet and seatbelt laws. In a cab, the driver must wear a seatbelt. Time and again I get in the back seat of a cab and can see the straps but the buckles are missing or shoved down under the chair. Why am I or any other citizen denied the right or ability to wear a seatbelt just because we are not the driver?
Solutions to these problems are simple and easy to implement:
-- Ban all vehicles, including motorcycles and scooters, from public parks.
-- Issue tickets to transgressors, with heavy penalties.
-- Require garbage trucks to complete pick-ups by 7am, drive no faster than 10kph and give way to pedestrians within the park.
-- Outlaw the blocking of sidewalks between residential buildings and tow away vehicles that block such sidewalks.
-- Require that seatbelts in cabs work so that passengers can use them if they so choose.
Reflecting on Typhoon Nari, I feel that Taiwan is totally unprepared and untrained to handle any form of severe disaster. Why is this lack of concern on the part of public safety officials tolerated by citizens? It is time for the government to decide whether it wants Taiwan to be a third world country or a first world country. These are issues that the government must review, prioritize and address immediately. Citizens of Taiwan need to start asking questions and stop just accepting things that threaten the safety of themselves and their loves ones.
Shannon Pettis
Taipei
Mayor Ma on the wrong track
A working day. 9:28am. ICRT's traffic bulletin. "Yangde Boulevard jam-packed." 9:28am? Any city worthy of being called a city would cherish a gem like Yangmingshan on its doorstep. But not Taipei.
While Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) prances about in shorts trying to turn the tide of history by making prostitution disappear, the beautiful mountain is being assaulted on two fronts.
First, the corrupt re-zoning of National Park land has unleashed rampant construction. Mayor Ma, it doesn't matter how many new roads you build at the top of the mountain. You've basically got only one road up and down. You're just perfecting the bottleneck.
Secondly, the university perched on the mountain, privately owned by Ma's KMT crony, has been allowed to quadruple its student intake over the last few years, without adding the requisite extra facilities.
This gemstone of academe features such unique activities as 40-a-side basketball and 12-a-side tennis. This morning I counted 44 students on the basketball court. The classrooms are like sardine-cans with students outside taking notes through the windows. Moreover, according to the student body, 4000 students live in illegal gulag-style huts strewn all over the mountain.
Do these students' long-suffering parents realize the dangers of these unregulated places with unscrupulous landlords and the risks of sexual harassment and fire? Last year two students died in just such a fire.
Adding to the general degradation of the environment, is the fact that every student has a scooter with the result that the entire vicinity of the university is carpeted with them.
It is widely acknowledged that higher education in Taiwan is just an excuse for the students to let off steam after their high school examination hell. The negative effect is that these myriad scooters are ridden every inch of the mountain, 24 hours a day. The final irony is that this edifice to greed is named the Chinese Culture University. Perhaps it should be renamed the Taipei Culture University.
Meanwhile, Mayor Ma should try a shot of urban planning, rather than attempting the impossible: the eradication of the oldest profession.
Jonathan A. G. Chandler
Taipei
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