This weeks installment of "Chinese will sleep anywhere" features our own Betty. On her latest trip, her co workers found it hilarious to take a photo of her snoozing whenever they were driving. This is but one offering from a montage of 10 pictures they sent of her out cold. Each photo has her napping in a different location and outfit. Fortunately, none of them show her drooling.
"At least seven highways in Liaoning province were fully or partially closed on 24 November due to smog. The Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA) has issued a yellow snowstorm alert (the lowest in a three-tier colour-coded warning system) for central-eastern Heilongjiang, Central-eastern Jilin and northern Liaoning provinces. On the previous day, several roads were closed in Heilongjiang province, while all flights at Harbin Taiping International Airport (HRB, Heilongjiang) were cancelled due to poor visibility." Delightful
Since this is a short week and don't have a ton of time, thought I would share the first draft of the article I wrote about driving in Taiwan. The intent was to submit to the local English paper or Community Center magazine. Have since edited it down, cleaned up the language, added pictures, etc., and am waiting to hear back if they will publish, but since I had this (very) raw version, didn't want to waste it. Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving...
I have lived in Taipei just over a year, and from day one, have been delighted with the city. Stuff works...the water is clean, public transportation is cost efficient, quick and reliable, and there are many interesting things to do and places to eat. And the people are amazing. The country produces many high end products (a testament to hard work and ingenuity), I feel safer here walking around in the wee hours of the morning than I do in the middle of the day almost anywhere else, and just about everyone we meet has been kind and helpful to us, which is especially wonderful for someone challenged by not knowing the language.
So what is up with their style of driving? How can this society of cordial and hard working people turn into such total @$$#*({$ when they get behind the wheel?
Before I dig in, I should tell you why I think I am qualified to judge. I grew up in Southern California where the car is king. Started riding a moped at 13 and got my license on my 16th birthday. My commutes to work have been 1-2 hours in peak rush hour traffic at times. I have driven across country more than once, and have lived or driven all over the world (including the UK and Australia where they drive on the right (wrong) side of the road. And my mother, who was seventy-five at the time, even told me over a couple glasses of wine that I was conceived in a car, so consider driving as being an integral part of my DNA.
Are the Taiwanese "bad" drivers? I am not going to claim that the United States, or any country for that matter, has cornered the market on superior drivers. There is a percentage of every population with people that are spatially challenged, or have hit that point in life where reaction time has slowed and vision impaired. The fact that the locals are able to maneuver in the narrowest of lanes and alleys would indicate that they are competent, but it is the volume and nature of the aggressive drivers here that is astounding.
I am not going to go into the fact that a red light means that you have 4 more seconds to enter the intersection, or that the majority of people parking at the Costco insist on backing into the spot (shake my head as I watch them load a cubic meter of toilet paper and 20 kilos of rice into their trunks which are up against a wall). And will not tackle today the fact that pedestrians need to fear for their lives anytime they have to cross a street (in my opinion, they are considered more precious than an orange traffic cone, but less valuable than the automated traffic control scarecrows). Nor will I detail that the use of turn signals is an invitation for another driver to block your move. If I were to change the driving culture, the place I would start is the aggressive turning from the wrong lane.
There are two scenarios that I see repeated on an endless loop when on the road. The first example...you have three lanes where two are clearly marked with arrows going straight while the left lane is a left turn only lane. The light is red and there are cars piled up in the two straight lanes while there are only a couple in the left turn lane. The bad guy will zip up the left turn lane to the front of the line and probe with his front bumper into the straight lane in a game of chicken until someone allows him in. Not only does the process basically stop progress in that straight lane, but now everyone that has waited their turn is delayed because the cutter has decided that his time if far more important that everyone else.
The second scenario is the reverse. Same three lanes, one going left, only this time the traffic is piled up in the left turn lane. Our narcissistic driver will then travel in the open straight lane then dive into the intersection to make the left. As the quantity of drivers that think this is OK is high, we now have multiples behind him, which now blocks the straight lane that they are making the illegal turn from. In a lot of these cases, the illegal left turner edges so far out into the oncoming traffic lane that people have to swerve so as not to crash head-on into him.
These take on many forms. I drive by the Taipei City Hospital twice a day, and there is a street that is two lanes, one clearly marked with straight lane, and one marked to turn right in front of the hospital. At least once a week, I will see a car waiting to make that right, but there is a pedestrian, often times someone who is disabled and going to the doctor, crossing the street. Our impatient driver above cannot see what is going on in front of him, so he decides that the car in front of him is sleeping and he is going to veer into the straight lane to go around the waiting car to make the right turn, and almost hits the poor old guy with the oxygen tank.
So how did we get here? My theory is that many of the people driving cars now got their first experience on the roads driving a scooter. A lot of people are afraid of the scooter riders, but I find them to be quite good for the most part. There are plenty that take unnecessary risks like driving in blind spots and speed veering through traffic, but they are usually endangering their own lives. While it would be just a scratch on the automobile, I wish they would mellow out because the poor driver that ends of hitting the scooter rider through no fault of his own will have to live with the sight of someone getting hurt by his own vehicle. As the majority of people learned the roads on a scooter, and there is a tacit agreement with the 4-wheeled drivers that it is OK to slip through cars to get to the front of an intersection, when they later get their cars, they then believe that getting to the front of the line by any means possible is the correct way to drive.
Another part of all this cutting people off that amazes me is that no one gets mad. You rarely hear a horn honked or see a finger raised. Coming from the land of road rage, I fully expect to see fist fights breaking out at every intersection, but it feels that all the divers on the road think this behavior is OK. I believe this is partially due to anonymity of the driver with the heavy tinting of windows that appears legal. Most car windows are so blackened out that you barely see a silhouette of the driver, many times picking his/her nose. Side note...the car is an acceptable place to pick ones nose, but it seems like it is the national pastime around here.
And where does all the cutting get you but to the next red light. Honestly, have you ever driven through more than two green lights at a time here? I understand the methodology to the city planners syncing of traffic lights in this way, and it works quite well in keeping congestion low for the most part, so should encourage people to mellow out and slow down, because the risk they take to not only their own, but others lives has little reward.
This is my open and honest statement to the people of Taiwan. You have an amazing country and are a fantastic people, but until the time comes when the show of respect to strangers in public situations is same that you would afford your own mother, you will never gain the respect you deserve from the world.
And I know you can do it. When we were researching moving here, I pulled out an old National Geographic from 1993 with an article on Taiwan. There is this picture of a street clogged with scooters, and only about 25% of the riders were wearing helmets. Today, you cannot find a single rider (save for the more than occasional toddler sandwiched between mom and dad...those people should be arrested on the spot) without proper head gear. Have been told that the government made wearing helmets the law many years ago, and that they put teeth behind it with severe fines for those riders caught without one. Magically and overnight, all riders were wearing helmets.
The laws governing turns are on the books, and the challenge is to the government to enforce them. They love their cameras around here so why not install the enforcement type at the intersections. The speed cams are quite effective (full disclosure, I received seven speeding tickets in the first two months after arriving here. Speaking of those, while I am sure they generate some decent revenue, once you know where they are, they are pretty easy to defeat. In fact, I would argue they are ultimately more dangerous than helpful as people will speed and then slam on the brakes knowing one is coming up, thereby causing more rear end collisions.
You also see tons of orange cone and whistle traffic wielding officers all over, and people will do illegal maneuvers right in front of them. Give them the power to write down a license and send the ticket through the mail (as they do with the traffic cams). People will obviously deny their infraction without proof, so you make the first infraction a warning, and then hit them hard on the second. How about NT$5000 for the second and then NT$10,000 for the third? I think the government would love a new way to generate some revenue while making the roads a safer place to be. A classic win-win scenarios.
There should also be special rules and punishment for taxi drivers, who are uniformly the biggest scofflaws of all. We all know they have two modes; First, looking for a fare. Driving slow and making wild and unpredictable turns without warning if they suspect a fare is possible. Second, I have the fare and will drive like a bat out of hell to complete the ride and move back into the first mode. While the car's registered owner gets the ticket in the photo radar or proposal above, you have to go after the driver. I am not saying that you draw and quarter them and then put their head on a spike at some busy intersection as an example to the rest of the drivers (at least not on the first infraction anyway), but you threaten to take away his livelihood with large fines or license suspensions, and I bet they fall in line faster than a fat kid waiting for a piece of birthday cake.
Perhaps the worst offenders of all are the public bus drivers. They drive as aggressively as taxi at times and there should be zero tolerance for infractions by them. I appreciate that the taxis and buses are trying to get their passengers to their destinations quickly, but they invariably are the ones causing the biggest delays.
It is easy Taiwan...let's make it happen.
