Starting on July 1, the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) will issue a new edition of the international driving permit that highlights the word “Taiwan” on the cover.
The highway authority redesigned the cover of the permit after complaints from Taiwanese tourists that they were often mistaken for Chinese when driving overseas.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Chu-yin (林楚茵) told a news conference on May 7 that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has since last year issued a new passport highlighting “Taiwan” and there is no reason the highway authority should not be able to do so, too.
Photo: CNA
The new permit cover features the word “Taiwan” directly above the title “International Driving Permit” to better distinguish Taiwanese driving permits from those issued by China, DGH Deputy Chief Engineer Lin Yi-sheng (林義勝) said, adding that nothing else has changed.
“Our international driving permit was designed based on the [Vienna] Convention on Road Traffic [of] 1968. Except for adding in Taiwan, we have not changed other items on the cover, which should not affect the validity of the permit,” he said.
The agency has consulted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the matter, he added.
Photo courtesy of the Directorate General of Highways via CNA
The new edition of the international driving permit is to become available on July 1, he added.
“Current international driving permit holders can continue using their permits until they expire,” Lin Yi-sheng said. “Even if their permits have not yet expired, they can still apply for the new design.”
When applying for an international driving permit, applicants should bring their national identification card, local driver’s license, two passport-size photos, their passport and a photocopy of the passport, he said.
The permit is valid for three years, and the application fee is NT$250, he added.
Taiwan’s international driving permit is recognized by 95 countries and territories, agency data showed.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency received about 160,000 applications for international driving permits per year from 2017 to 2019, the agency said.
The number of applications has dwindled to 30,000 per year since 2020, as the pandemic has disrupted international travel, it said.
Taiwan’s embassies and missions abroad will help explain the main difference between the current and new editions of the permit to law enforcement authorities in their respective countries, the agency said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching