Police officials issued a public warning and announced efforts to crack down on drunk driving by beefing up patrol and roadside checks at selected spots across the nation, due to a recent increase in drunk-driving offenses, ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays next month.
After two fatal incidents caused by driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in recent days, Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里) police chief on Friday announced that the police would be expanding roadside breath alcohol testing, and would have more officers on duty to administer checks on weekends, during local temple festivals and on days leading up to and during next month’s winter holiday period.
A foreign migrant worker was found dead on a street in Puli on Jan. 10. The police determined that the scooter he was riding collided with a roadside lamppost and test results showed he was over the legal limit of 0.15 mg/liter in blood alcohol content, Puli Town police chief Lin Wei-ting (林威廷) said yesterday.
Photo: Hsu Kuo-chen, Taipei Times
In the early morning of Jan. 12, a man riding a scooter hit an elderly woman crossing the street.
Police determined that the man had been drinking with friends during the night and was over the legal limit, and he was charged under the Offenses Against Public Safety Act (公共危險罪) and with negligence in causing death.
It is unusual for two fatal accidents to occur in Puli Township within a week of each other, Chen said, therefore police officers would expand roadside checks and administer breath alcohol tests on motorists, along with local public information campaigns to warn against drinking and driving.
In data released yesterday by Ministry of Justice officials, the number of inmates serving time in prison for a third conviction for drunk driving were on the rise in the past year, with 102 out of 314 prisoners held at Nantou County Prison at the end of last month, about one-third, being charged with DUI offenses.
Lawmakers amended the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act (道路交通管理處罰條例) in 2019 to impose higher fines for DUI offenses, doubling the fine for people refusing to take the breath alcohol test to NT$180,000 (US$5,725) and handing out prison terms for third DUI convictions.
ON THE RUN
Separately, police in Kaohsiung arrested a man surnamed Su (蘇), 45, earlier this week as he had been wanted for his fifth DUI offenses, but he fled and remained on the run for about a year.
Su’s first DUI conviction was in August 2017. He received four DUIs within three years, with the latest in July 2020, for which judges handed out a fine. However, for his fifth offense he received an eight-month prison term.
After his sentencing, he failed to show up to his incarceration, and police issued a warrant for his arrest in February last year.
He kept a low profile and took employment elsewhere. However he had recently returned to Kaohsiung, and a local police officer with a sharp eye found Su drinking rice wine outside a local convenience store in the city on Tuesday and arrested him.
Meanwhile, New Taipei officials said they had caught up with a man surnamed Huang (黃) to enforce an NT$18,000 fine for his refusal to take a breath alcohol test. Records showed that he had previously received six convictions for DUI offenses. I
In four of the cases he served a total of 20 months in prison, and for the two other cases he received a total fine of NT$210,000.
Additional reporting by Hong Ting-hong
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