Drivers and riders are being used as "geese that lay golden eggs" by the transportation authorities, who use traffic fines to make easy money and beef up the national coffers, a group of People First Party (PFP) legislators claimed yesterday.
PFP Legislator Lee Hung-chun (
Lee said that, according to the general budget plan for next year that the Cabinet recently submitted to the legislature for approval, traffic ticket income from freeways alone is projected as somewhere around NT$4.3 billion for next year.
Already No. 1 in the world in terms of traffic penalties, the nation's drivers are expected to suffer ever-increasing fines in the coming year, with 1.46 million NT$3,000 tickets expected to be issued in the year to "earn" a projected revenue of NT$4.3 billion from freeways alone, Lee said.
To reach the 1.46 million tickets goal, Lee argued, traffic police must issue more than 4,000 tickets in the freeway systems each day, or 167 tickets per hour, which he said would set another record.
PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
The practice has caused the Control Yuan to reprimand the min-istry and has prompted several irate drivers to vent their frustration by ramming their vehicles into the ministry's headquarters. Despite this, however, the ministry has not been found to review its policies or conduct any soul-searching, Liu said.
He said the government should rethink its policy of making traffic fines one of its major sources of revenue. Instead, he said, the government should rule that fines collected from traffic violations should only be used to improve Taiwan's traffic and transportation conditions and to finance compensation for public employees who die on the road.
Liu said increased fines for drivers and riders is not conducive to improving traffic and transportation in the country, where each road user was issued a world-record average of 1.5 tickets last year.
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