A Vietnamese migrant couple who were riding a battery-assisted bicycle in Taichung, central Taiwan, were killed after becoming trapped under a car that hit them from behind on Saturday night. The 32-year-old Taiwanese driver of the car was arrested for dangerous driving causing death.
At 11pm on July 21, the 30-year-old woman surnamed Nguyen was riding the bicycle with her 26-year-old boyfriend surnamed Vo on the pillion seat along Jiahou Road, Taichung City, The Liberty Times reported.
While the couple were travelling across Jiahou Bridge, the driver, a male named Chen, crashed into them from behind.
Nguyen and Vo were trapped underneath the car, which dragged them more than 65 meters before the vehicle came to a halt.
The driver, who was arrested for dangerous driving causing death, told the police that he could not see the couple due to the absence of bike lights.
Chen passed a breath alcohol test and police are investigating the cause of the incident.
Cause of death: stupidity.
Actually, this is a huge issue in Taiwan because almost no one really learns how to drive a car properly. And it’s the government’s fault. Let me explain…
The car driving test is extremely difficult to pass without very specific training, because it is not really a driving test at all; it’s more of a tricky parking test. You need to reverse into a narrow space, parallel park without using forward gear more than once, and pull into a very narrow S-curve and reverse out of it without changing gears more than once. All of these tricky tasks require you not to hit sensors on the sides of the narrow lanes. A single slip and you FAIL! None of it has to do with driving, and the actual driving handbook the government gives you also contains very little on the "rules of the road," choosing to focus on testable minutiae instead.
The result is a gigantic driving test "bushiban" (private study class) industry that helps people learn how to pass the test. So, parents typically spend about $30,000 (NTD) (about $1000 USD) to send their kid to a driving class where they learn exactly when to change gears and turn the steering wheel X many times to the left when the tree lines up with the right-side mirror, etc, and so on. The test courses all around the country have the EXACT same layout down to the trees being the same locations and everything. Furthermore, many of these driving schools are given license to administer the test themselves!!! How that is not a dangerous conflict of interest, I’ll never understand.
The parents, having spent a months wages on their kid’s driving lessons feel that they have done their duty and do not feel any need to instruct Junior themselves. But Junior, who is now likely a pretty good parker, is left to figure out on his own how to actually drive safely. Most people aren’t even aware that lefthand lanes are for faster traffic. Lots of people pull straight into traffic without shoulder checking, or at least begin to pull out and then check for oncoming cars. No one seems to understand that following distance needs to increase the faster you are moving. (Even the driver’s handbook fails to explain this basic rule of the road.)
As with many things in Taiwan, this ridiculous system persists year after year because politicians here do not like to change longstanding procedures because they hate to be criticized and they prefer to spend their time arguing about national identity issues I guess.
At the very least, the government should run public service ads on TV explaining some basic driving practices to the public. The TV news does a fine job showing the bloody and deadly results, but there seems to be precious little proactive information available to the public. This is a shame.