Failures and negligence by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and the Executive Yuan, which oversees the ministry, have led to deteriorating safety on the nation’s roads, leading to escalating figures of fatalities and injuries in recent years, a Control Yuan report said.
The Executive Yuan has failed to adequately oversee the ministry, the report said, adding that it has contributed to Taiwan garnering an international image as a “pedestrian hell,” with about 3,000 people killed and 540,000 injured in traffic incidents on average each year.
“Despite implementing various new safety measures, this did not improve the situation. Therefore, the ministry and the Executive Yuan were negligent in not protecting the road safety of citizens. Therefore, the ministry must be censured,” the conclusion of the investigation report by Control Yuan members Wang Yu-ling, (王幼玲) Lai Cheng-chang (賴振昌) and Chao Yung-ching (趙永清) said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The Executive Yuan has implemented the Improvement Program for Traffic Order and Safety (道路交通秩序與交通安全改進方案), setting a target of reducing road traffic fatalities by 5 percent each year from 2016 to 2026.
The report said the Executive Yuan did not adequately supervise and monitor the ministry program. Rather than road fatalities declining in this period, Taiwan saw higher rates of fatalities and injuries, the report said.
The report said that more than half of the deaths and injuries inflicted on pedestrians took place at crossings and road intersections over the past 10 years, resulting in foreign media labeling Taiwan a “pedestrian hell.”
“Although ministry officials developed new programs to improve safety, there were still 400,000 pedestrian road incidents last year, a 6.7 percent increase from 2022. Though pedestrian deaths decreased by 14 percent, traffic incidents at crossings increased, with an increase of four deaths and 294 people injured, an increase of 3.3 percent from 2022,” it said.
“Fatalities and injuries at crossing and road intersections kept climbing to new highs in recent years,” the report said.
“These are a manifestation of our nation’s long years of prioritizing automobiles while ignoring the rights of pedestrians,” the report said.
“This causes a danger to people’s lives and our nation’s international image suffers. Officials in charge at the ministry and the Executive Yuan must take responsibility for this failure,” the report added.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS