A vehicle with flashing lights may not necessarily be an emergency vehicle, a legislator said yesterday.
"Some members of national or local legislative bodies, heads of local governments, or just ordinary citizens put these flashing lights on their cars so other drivers will yield to them," Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) told a press conference.
Flashing lights are available in stores at prices raging from NT$400 to a little over NT$1,000, Huang said, adding that regulations on use of the lights are vague and inadequate.
An executive order issued by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) in 1984 says that "any vehicle other than fire engines, ambulances, police and construction vehicles ? shall not install red flashing lights and sirens."
According to the same executive order, unauthorized installation of flashing lights is punishable by fines of between NT$900 to NT$1,800, not for the misuse itself, but for "unauthorized alteration of a vehicle's exterior appearance," under Article 16 of the Road Traffic Management and Punishment Law (道路交通管理處罰條例).
"It's very vague, it regulates red lights, but what about yellow ones and blue ones?" Huang asked.
It's also vague in terms of which government agency is in charge of regulating the use of flashing lights.
"A security company applied for permission to use flashing lights to the MOTC, and the Taiwan Water Corporation made the same application to the Ministry of the Interior," he said, while holding two documents in his hand.
Although both applications were rejected both ministries replied as if they were in charge of this matter, Huang added.
Representatives from both ministries promised to set up a single window for the matter, and that stricter regulations would be drawn up and submitted to the legislature for review.
"We'll probably ask local motor vehicle offices to review regulations and issue permissions to use flashing lights," said Chung Hung-chun (
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS