Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Sandy Yu (游毓蘭) on Sunday called for new legislation to standardize road and sidewalk designs to better protect pedestrians.
The proposal came in the wake of an incident last month in which a mother and child were killed by a bus while crossing an intersection in Taichung, as well as the publication of a CNN article that called Taiwan a “living hell” for pedestrians.
Yu said there were 410 pedestrian fatalities in Taiwan last year, of which 23 involved people who were killed while using pedestrian crossings.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
The “pedestrian-unfriendly” traffic environment stems in part from regulations that enable road design authorities to build discontinuous sidewalks that are easily obstructed or no sidewalks at all, she said.
Yu said legislation should be drafted to set strict national standards for pedestrian infrastructure construction.
A nationwide survey should be conducted to identify areas that are risky for pedestrians, she said, citing inadequate surface markings and signage at accident-prone sites.
Yu said lighting should be improved and more pedestrian islands should be constructed at intersections where large numbers of incidents involving pedestrians occur.
There should be safety certifications for roads and intersections of a certain size, she added.
Taiwan Traffic Safety Association vice president Lin Chih-hsueh (林志學) said poor road design is to blame for the high number of incidents involving pedestrians, rather than Taiwan’s driving culture.
Lin said the government tends to claim that individual drivers who are involved in such incidents are to blame, while it neglects the root cause of the problem.
Lin echoed Yu’s comments that national standards for road construction are needed, citing Japan’s Road Construction Ordinance as a potential guideline for legislators.
A comprehensive effort should be made to identify and redesign dangerous intersections, he said.
There is a growing international trend toward making intersections smaller, which entices drivers to reduce their speed as they approach them, giving them more time to react to pedestrians, he said.
Road planners should also seek to increase visibility at intersections by ensuring that drivers’ view of sidewalks is not obstructed, Lin said, adding that traffic islands would also contribute to solving the issue.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS