Data published on Oct. 27 by the Department of Railways, Highways and Road Safety showed there were 83 deaths due to road safety incidents in Nantou County in the first eighteen months this year. That is 40 more deaths than in the same period last year, and is the biggest increase in traffic accident deaths across the nation. Sad to say, this result was not a surprise for me.
I have lived in Taichung and Taipei for more than 20 years, during which time I have traveled countless kilometers by car and scooter, yet managed to survive unscathed. Notably, while riding a scooter for many years in Taipei, there seemed to be an endless stream of traffic, but the police’s strict enforcement of the law and the public’s observance of the rules made it quite safe.
My luck took a turn for the worse when, not long after returning to live in my home county of Nantou, I was hit by a vehicle while riding my scooter. That accident left me disabled for half a year. Only after a year of rehabilitation and two surgeries did I fully recover. Since then, I have seen plenty of traffic accidents, which have inspired me to keep a close eye on traffic safety. Based on my observations, I identify three main problems.
The first is that the authorities in Nantou County only focus on transport engineering projects, while neglecting traffic management. Believe it or not, Nantou County is the only region in Taiwan where there is no charge for roadside parking. Toward the end of the tenure of former Nantou County commissioner Lin Ming-chen (林明溱), other counties and cities were removing the covers from drainage channels so that the waterways could breathe, but Lin bucked the trend by covering the main drainage channel in Nantou City, turning it into a parking lot where vehicles can park for free.
Furthermore, the covered channel has become a trap for filth and a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Not to be outdone, then-Nantou mayor Song Huai-lin (宋懷琳) turned the community park of a certain borough into a parking lot and, close to the end of her tenure, set about renovating parking lots in the surrounding area, but of course not charging anything for parking there. Could it be that voters like construction projects, but do not like them being managed later on?
The second problem is that Nantou’s public transport infrastructure resembles that of a backward country. Traveling from Nantou to Taichung via public transport is like crossing from one country to another. The relative cleanliness of Taichung’s buses might be because Taichung is prosperous, but the fact that Taichung’s bus drivers are smartly dressed and more polite than those in Nantou is a management issue. In fact, it is worse now than it was half a century ago. In those days, when I was attending senior-high school, I rode to and from Taichung on a student bus run by the Highway Bureau. Although passengers were packed in like sardines, the interior of the bus was clean and the drivers were courteous and drove safely.
If Nantou’s main transport routes are this badly run, the outlying areas are even worse.
The third problem is that police are lax about enforcing traffic laws and discipline. Illegal parking can be seen everywhere, with parked vehicles often blocking pedestrian crossings for long periods, but the police just turn a blind eye to it. Only when pressed to do so do they clamp down, feeding stories to the media to show that they are doing something.
High-tech law enforcement could give illegal parkers nowhere to hide, but the police cannot be bothered to use it. It is common to see the police setting an “ambush” in cool, shaded places, waiting for the chance to meet their performance targets by nabbing scooter riders who make illegal right turns while the traffic lights are red. Meanwhile, the police are nowhere to be seen at peak times on the most dangerous interchanges, leaving ambulances or traffic police to deal with accidents. The police often say they are understaffed, but the real problem might be their penchant for picking on easy targets. As for blaming the accident figures on the high proportion of elderly people in Nantou County, it is even more ridiculous, because the proportion of elderly people in Chiayi and Yunlin counties are even higher.
According to Ministry of Finance statistics regarding taxpayers’ median total individual income, Nantou County had the lowest median income in Taiwan for four years in a row from 2017 to 2020 — the most recent year for which official figures are available. Lin boasted about Nantou being Taiwan’s “tourism capital,” but it is a different story for people who live there.
The main reason for this failure is the incompetence of Nantou’s leaders and their appointees. Nantou County Commissioner Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) has made creating “livable towns” a central theme of her governance, but if she cannot even get traffic safety right or safeguard county residents’ lives, how can she boast about “livability”?
Hsin Yu-an is a freelancer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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