Twenty-two people, mostly Chinese tourists, were injured yesterday when their tour bus hit an overpass in Kaohsiung, the Tourism Bureau said, adding that none of the injuries were life-threatening.
The accident occurred when the bus — carrying 28 people, including the driver, a tour guide and 26 tourists from China’s Zhejiang Province — tried to drive through a railway underpass that was too low for the vehicle, the bureau said.
The local fire department said seven of the injured were children, adding that they sustained minor injuries.
Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
The tourists were on a six-day trip that began on Wednesday.
The driver’s unfamiliarity with local streets and lack of alertness might have caused the accident, police said.
The driver, a Kaohsiung resident who has three years of driving experience, said he did not know that the underpass had a height limit of 2.8m, less than the height of the bus, because he had never traveled on that road before and was distracted by the tour guide when the accident took place, according to police.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
The driver said he was neither drunk nor tired at the time of the accident.
China’s National Tourism Bureau paid close attention to the incident and called for greater security safeguards for Chinese tourists in Taiwan, China’s Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
The accident came months after one of Taiwan’s most serious tour bus accidents involving Chinese visitors, when a bus carrying 24 members of a Chinese tour group and a Taiwanese tour guide en route to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport crashed into a freeway guardrail and burst into flames.
Everyone aboard, including the driver, was killed in the incident on July 19 last year as the emergency doors could not be opened.
Prosecutors concluded that Su Ming-cheng (蘇明成), the bus driver who had immigrated from China, deliberately set fire to the vehicle because he was upset over family pressure and was being sentenced to prison in a sexual assault case.
Additional reporting by Reuters
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
The zero emissions ship Porrima P111 was launched yesterday in Kaohsiung, showcasing the nation’s advancement in green technology, city Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said. The nation last year acquired the Swiss-owned vessel, formerly known as Turanor PlanetSolar, in a bid to boost Taiwan’s technology sector, as well as ecotourism in Palau, Chen said at the ship’s launch ceremony at Singda Harbor. Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) also attended the event. The original vessel was the first solar-powered ship to circumnavigate the globe in a voyage from 2010 to 2012. Taiwan-based Porrima Inc (保利馬) installed upgrades with
ENHANCE DETERRENCE: Taiwan has to display ‘fierce resolve’ to defend itself for China to understand that the costs of war outweigh potential gains, Koo said Taiwan’s armed forces must reach a high level of combat readiness by 2027 to effectively deter a potential Chinese invasion, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) published yesterday. His comments came three days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the US Senate that deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan requires making a conflict “cost more than what it’s worth.” Rubio made the remarks in response to a question about US policy on Taiwan’s defense from Republican Senator John Cornyn, who said that Chinese
RSS