The Directorate-General of Highways has said that it plans to add interactive situational awareness videos to scooter and motorcycle license tests. This is a small step in the right direction, as the number of fatalities in road accidents remains high, and the majority of accidents involve scooters and motorcycles.
National Police Agency statistics show that the number of vehicular accidents continues to increase. In 2009, there were 160,879 reported cases, which included 2,092 fatalities. The number of cases peaked in 2014, with 307,842, although the death toll fell to 1,819. The 2017 figure of 296,826 cases remained disconcertingly high.
The fatality figure records only “A1” category deaths: those that occur on the spot or within 24 hours of an accident. The agency statistics do not include the “A2” category — the number of fatalities 24 hours or more after an accident — so the real number of deaths is higher.
The agency’s statistics for causes and casualties of traffic accidents for 2017 give a slightly lower number of A1 fatalities — 1,434 — but the overwhelming majority of these — 1,358 — are classed as being due to driver error.
By type of vehicle, of the 296,826 cases in 2017, 91,762 involved private passenger cars, while 155,669 — more than half — were motorcycles.
This figure certainly suggests that it is right to target drivers of scooters and motorcycles with the interactive road awareness tests, but it is not the whole story.
Road awareness is not simply about alertness or reaction times. It is also about anticipating what could possibly happen through the ability to read the road and experience.
It is about knowing when to use patience and caution to ensure that one’s actions do not cause a potentially dangerous situation, and how to judge the amount of time required to execute a certain maneuver in such a way that does not oblige another road user to change course or decelerate to avoid an accident.
It also involves not just being able to anticipate other’s actions, but also understanding how one’s own actions might be anticipated by others.
Too many times drivers in Taiwan attempt to enter a stream of traffic without first looking behind them or checking their rear-view mirrors, assuming that drivers behind them would slow down or change lanes to accommodate their entry.
A driver poking the nose of their vehicle into the stream of traffic, anticipating a gap in which to move, or initiating a move out of a parking space on the roadside, could cause scooters behind them to assume that they are actually moving out, forcing them to brake abruptly or change lane. This could cause accidents, even when the motorcyclist is not at fault.
The fact that scooters are disproportionately represented in the accident figures does not mean the problem of insufficient road awareness lies with scooter drivers alone. Accidents are caused by the impatience, selfishness and lack of road awareness of drivers of other vehicles, too — it is just that scooters are less stable and their riders are more vulnerable when an accident occurs.
However, the real problem lies in the nation’s driving culture as a whole. The video initiative will not improve the road awareness of drivers who already have their licenses, and new drivers are likely to absorb the unofficial rules of the road embedded in the driving culture soon after they obtain their licenses.
Initiatives to educate children about road awareness and stricter license testing with an increased emphasis on situational awareness must go hand-in-hand with other programs to educate current drivers about reading the road.
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