Taiwan is a famously safe place to live, work and travel. Yet crossing the road or driving a scooter is like dicing with death.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/01/16
By: Jules Quartly
Taiwan is at the bleeding edge of road traffic safety.
At a car park near Taipei 101 there is a regularly updated notice (with obligatory “fun”
Photo Credit: AP/達志影像
cartoon) that provides the number of road traffic deaths and injuries every month. It has become a game with my kids to guess what the new figures are. They are, without fail, always higher than the previous month.
“The real monsters are cars and motorbikes,” I tell my kids. After all, it’s not wild creatures under the bed, animals, stranger danger, terrorists or an act of God that are likely to kill or maim as much as drivers.
Every year about 1.3 million people are wiped out in road crashes and as many as 50 million injured, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank. That’s more than 3,500 people dying daily, most of them kids, the elderly, pedestrians and cyclists. These figures are set to increase by 65 percent over the next 20 years if nothing changes. And of course, nothing will. [FULL STORY]