The Directorate-General of Highways introduced a sticker yesterday that puts the onus on passengers sitting in back seats of taxis to fasten their seat belts or pay a fine.
According to a new law that took effect on Aug. 1, taxi drivers will be fined between NT$1,500 and NT$6,000 if their rear seat passengers are found not wearing seat belts and they were not informed before their ride of the necessity of using a seat belt.
There is a grace period — until Feb. 1 next year — before violators are penalized.
Photo: CNA, Directorate General of Highways
However, if passengers are informed by the driver to buckle up, but they decide not to, then the passengers would face a fine of NT$4,500, the agency said.
The new stickers, which read “Buckle Up or Pay Up,” were designed primarily to put the responsibility of wearing a seat belt when riding in taxis in the hands of the passenger.
The agency is recommending that taxi drivers adhere the stickers to the paneling facing the front passenger’s seat, as well as on the back of the front-seat headrests so they can be easily spotted.
By placing the stickers in those places, the drivers would meet their responsibility to inform the passengers of the law, the agency said.
The issue of wearing seat belts in the backseat gained national attention when Nora Sun (孫穗芬), a granddaughter of Republic of China founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), was killed in a freeway car accident in January. She was not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.
Former Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Chen Chao-lung (陳朝龍) first proposed the amendment to the Act Governing Punishments for Violations of Road Traffic Regulations (道路交通管理處罰條例) in 2006 after Shaw Hsiao-ling (邵曉鈴), the wife of Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) was severly injured in a crash on a freeway near Tainan.
Shaw, who had not been wearing a seat belt, was thrown from a minivan, and lost her spleen and part of her left arm as a result of the accident.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS