The Legislative Yuan on Tuesday approved regulations aiming to tackle pedestrian safety issues, including obstructed sidewalks and uneven walkways. The new rules stipulate a fine of NT$30,000 to NT$150,000 (US$923 to US$4,614) for failure to remove sidewalk obstructions within a specified timeline and allow local governments to have uneven walkways rebuilt.
Minister of the Interior Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) said in a statement that the rules were part of a four-year NT$40 billion project to improve pedestrian safety.
Improvements to pedestrian conditions in Taiwan are welcome, but the project is arguably very ambitious and unlikely to have a significant impact.
The issue is that many roads in Taiwan do not have sidewalks, and to add sidewalks and move light posts, transformers and fire hydrants toward the road to avoid obstructing pedestrians might make those roads too narrow for traffic.
Another major issue is rampant violations, in which businesses put items on sidewalks, and people park scooters on sidewalks where there is no designated space for doing so.
Without sufficient enforcement of regulations, widening sidewalks would only result in more space being illegally occupied by businesses and drivers.
Lack of consistency in surface material is another problem.
It is not uncommon in Taiwan to see someone slip and fall on a sidewalk with smooth tiles after rain, or due to the sidewalk being unexpectedly steeper than the part just before it. It is dangerous, especially for those who are visually impaired, on crutches or pushing a stroller.
Tackling this problem would require local governments to: clearly demarcate the sidewalk area; designate safe materials for sidewalk surfaces and use them uniformly across a city or municipality; ensure the sidewalk is consistently level along the whole length of a street; forbid businesses or individuals from modifying the sidewalk unless authorized; and enforce the regulations.
Sidewalks are only one threat to pedestrian safety in Taiwan. Other major issues include unsafe building fixtures and drivers who fail to yield at crosswalks.
A 21-year-old woman died on July 20 last year when an air-conditioner fell on her while she was waiting at a bus stop, and many people have been struck by vehicles and killed while crossing roads.
In one case, a woman and her baby were killed by a bus while crossing a road in Taichung on Dec. 28, 2022.
Pedestrians in Taiwan are conditioned to believe that they should yield to vehicles at crosswalks, despite the law saying the opposite. Motorists often honk their horns when approaching crossings, rather than slowing down to watch for pedestrians.
When stricter fines were introduced last year to deter people from driving through crosswalks while there are pedestrians, some drivers were critical of pedestrians.
A Taoyuan junior-high school student even won a High Distinction Award in the comics category at the National Student Art Competition for his piece, The Emperor Clause, which depicted a pedestrian portrayed as an emperor slowly crossing the road while drivers and scooter riders wait impatiently.
To truly improve pedestrian safety, the government needs to enforce sidewalk and crosswalk-related regulations, and better educate drivers and the public.
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
The saga of Sarah Dzafce, the disgraced former Miss Finland, is far more significant than a mere beauty pageant controversy. It serves as a potent and painful contemporary lesson in global cultural ethics and the absolute necessity of racial respect. Her public career was instantly pulverized not by a lapse in judgement, but by a deliberate act of racial hostility, the flames of which swiftly encircled the globe. The offensive action was simple, yet profoundly provocative: a 15-second video in which Dzafce performed the infamous “slanted eyes” gesture — a crude, historically loaded caricature of East Asian features used in Western
Is a new foreign partner for Taiwan emerging in the Middle East? Last week, Taiwanese media reported that Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) secretly visited Israel, a country with whom Taiwan has long shared unofficial relations but which has approached those relations cautiously. In the wake of China’s implicit but clear support for Hamas and Iran in the wake of the October 2023 assault on Israel, Jerusalem’s calculus may be changing. Both small countries facing literal existential threats, Israel and Taiwan have much to gain from closer ties. In his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, President William
A stabbing attack inside and near two busy Taipei MRT stations on Friday evening shocked the nation and made headlines in many foreign and local news media, as such indiscriminate attacks are rare in Taiwan. Four people died, including the 27-year-old suspect, and 11 people sustained injuries. At Taipei Main Station, the suspect threw smoke grenades near two exits and fatally stabbed one person who tried to stop him. He later made his way to Eslite Spectrum Nanxi department store near Zhongshan MRT Station, where he threw more smoke grenades and fatally stabbed a person on a scooter by the roadside.
RSS