The nation last year failed to meet its annual goal of reducing traffic-related deaths by 7 percent, despite an overall downward trend, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
Last year, 2,858 people were killed nationwide within 30 days of traffic accidents, down 3.1 percent and 5.5 percent compared with 2024 and 2023 respectively, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯) said.
“We will work with local government officials and enhance the enforcement of improvement measures,” Chen said.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
The Cabinet had aimed to reduce traffic-related deaths last year by 15 percent compared with 2023.
Other goals include lowering traffic accident deaths by 50 percent by 2030 and to zero by 2050.
Ministry data showed a downward trend in traffic-related deaths involving motorcycle riders, older people, drunk drivers, pedestrians and minors, Chen said.
Deaths caused by drunk drivers were down 43.5 percent from 2023, while the deaths of minors were lower by 22.4 percent and 24.4 percent compared with 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Department of Railways, Highways and Road Safety Director-General Wu Tung-ling (吳東凌) said the nation has made substantial progress in curbing the rise of traffic accident deaths involving minors, drunk drivers and pedestrians, but deaths involving motorcycle riders and older people remain high.
“The most common types of traffic accidents were single-vehicle crashes, such as self-skidding and collisions with objects. We are seeing more unlicensed motor vehicle operators as well,” Wu said.
“The focus of the road safety campaign this year would be reducing traffic accidents involving motorcycle riders and elderly people through road improvement projects, education and law enforcement,” Wu added.
Meanwhile, New Taipei City, Keelung, Chaiyi City and Tainan saw a rise in deaths recorded within 30 days of traffic accidents, while pedestrian deaths rose in Taichung, Yunlin County, Chiayi County and Kaohsiung, ministry data showed.
Kaohsiung topped other cities and counties with 307 people killed in traffic accidents last year, despite a decrease compared with 2024.
It was followed by 304 in Tainan and 291 in Taichung.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS