The majority of passengers traveling on the ill-fated Puyuma Express No. 6432 departing from New Taipei City’s Shulin Station and bound for Taitung County boarded at Taipei Railway Station.
The train derailed near Yilan County’s Sinma (新馬) Train Station, on the way from Luodong Railway Station to the train’s next stop, Hualien Railway Station.
By then, all the passengers traveling to Yilan County had alighted, either at Yilan or Luodong. All of those who died or were injured were bound for Hualien or Taitung.
Train accident reports have always been written by the railway administration, with experts and scholars well-acquainted with the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) being invited to make the occasional contribution to the investigation.
This has made it difficult to produce truly impartial, objective reports, and makes it difficult for the TRA to learn from its mistakes or determine what disciplinary measures need to be taken.
The public expects a truthful investigation, conducted by professionals, sufficient to win the trust of family members of the victims, insurance companies, the media and the public. What it does not want to see is equivocation and erroneous statements by the TRA, or for the issue to fade away once the news cycle moves on.
People need to know that the safety of passengers is guaranteed and the TRA needs to find a way to regain public confidence.
The derailment of a German Intercity Express high-speed train on June 3, 1998, killed 101 people and injured 88, the world’s deadliest high-speed rail disaster.
Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, the largest institute of applied sciences in Europe, was charged with investigating the cause of the accident.
The investigation found that one steel tire on a wheel belonging to the first car broke apart due to metal fatigue and peeled away from the wheel, causing many other cars to derail and inflicting severe damage and loss to human life.
Taiwan should learn hard lessons from painful past experiences, either by following the US model of establishing an independent public investigative agency, such as the US National Transportation Safety Board, or by learning from Germany and assigning investigations to a major research institute.
Only by stopping the Ministry of Transportation and Communications from acting both as player and referee can solutions be found following traffic accidents, rather than being stuck in a rut that only cures the symptoms without finding the root cause.
Demanding that a few politicians step down from office will neither bring real closure to those affected, nor prevent similar disasters from happening again. Larry Lin is a faculty member of National Taiwan University and former visiting research fellow at Harvard University.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then