Most disputes reported on the Taipei MRT system this year were caused by passengers bumping into each other, the Taipei Police Department’s Rapid Transit Division said.
A total of 209 dispute reports have been filed on the Taipei MRT since the beginning of this year, police said, adding that 65 percent of them involved people bumping into each other or stepping on somebody’s foot.
Twenty-nine of the complaints led to lawsuits over the offense of causing bodily harm, division data showed.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
One of the disputes involved a woman tripping on a baby carriage and grazing her lips at Yuanshan MRT Station on Oct. 22, the division said.
On Nov. 2, a conflict arose at Ximen MRT Station after a woman pushed aside an umbrella held by another passenger in front of her, it said.
Common causes of disputes include not giving up one’s seat to those in need, blocking another’s way and not wearing a mask, police said, adding that the disputes sometimes escalated into physical altercations or involved the use of pepper spray.
Passengers can press a red alert button to notify staff when a dispute occurs on an MRT train, the division said, adding that station personnel would also ask police to check security footage to help resolve the dispute.
Passengers should stay calm while riding the MRT and try to resolve disputes with sympathy and consideration, it added.
In related news, the Taipei District Court has ruled against a compensation request by a woman who broke her arm while walking up an escalator at Shantao Temple MRT Station in June 2020.
The woman, surnamed He (何), had demanded that Taipei Rapid Transit Corp and the company that manufactured the escalator pay her more than NT$650,000 (US$20,694) in compensation.
However, the court said that He was not holding on to the escalator handrail when she fell.
The woman said she had to walk up the escalator, as it was out of service, but tripped on the escalator step and fell, sustaining a fracture to her right arm, as well as grazes and other injuries.
He’s lawyer said she was not holding on to the handrail because she was walking on the left side of the escalator to overtake other passengers.
However, the court said there were not many passengers at the time of the accident, the station was well-lit and there were warning signs regarding the use of escalators, ruling that the defendants were not responsible for He’s fall.
The ruling can be appealed.
Additional reporting by Wen Yu-te
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