Filed under: Ben is Thinking | Tags: accident, asia, car, dangerous, kaoshiung, motorcycle, riding, road, scooter, taipei, taiwan, truck
Riding a bike in Taiwan? I’d have never expected it to be so stressful and full of risks, from the moment when you put the keys in, to the one when you park and turn the thing off, you can never be relieved.
Taiwan roads, to start with, are one of the worst in shape that I’ve ever seen…it’s never flat or when it is, it’s for a short, I’d say really short period of time before you get back on the usual potholes and the, so many, manholes.
For me, riding a bike on Taiwan’s roads feels just like riding a camel but with more speed into it, and your scooter or motorcycle receive the shocks and at the end, even your scooter was bought brand new, you end up spending loads of cash on fixing this and that.
But let’s not forget some other things that makes your scooter riding experience in Taiwan, sort of unforgettable, such as, the Taiwanese drivers, whether they’re riding a scooter, driving a car, a taxi or even a truck, behave in a bad way on the roads, scooters speeding up a zigzagging between scooters and cars, taxi drivers popping from everywhere on the road, sports cars horning n driving at some ridiculous speed with drivers chewing “Ping Lang”, the local drug or drunk and so on…
Another very stressful experience is that when it rains, even softly, the roads become very slippery and on the man-holes, it’s even worse…
So if you’re going to ride your bike anywhere in Taiwan, wear your helmet and maybe the mask, turn it on and hope for the best, because, in most cases, that’s all you can do.
Ben Hakam
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Dude, I totally agree with you. I think the problem of driving styles lie in two reasons. The first is that they have had no proper examples of driving. This is a country that started driving 50 years after the car was invented. The country wasn’t ready for such a transition. People started driving from scratch, and at the beginning there were no real rules for the roads. So parents taught children to drive, and they just get worse over the generations. And with added examples from race car movies like “Initial D” and the “Fast and The Furious” the kids just become these extremely dangerous drivers. The second reason is government control. The cops in Taiwan just don’t care. I have seen many times people running red lights right in front of the cops and they don’t do anything. And the intersection was not camera operated, so that’s not the reason. The Police just take their jobs as, “I do what I’m assigned to do. If today I’m making rounds, then I wait for crimes, if I’m assigned to traffic, then I’ll watch traffic.” Anyway, I could go on about this topic all day. But Taiwan needs to work on their driving a lot.
Comment by Pieter Peruch December 23, 2007 @ 4:48 pmHey………..u gotta be really careful……am not in the mood to lose you as yet……
And next time u go bike riding let me….so I can be on the look out…;)
Comment by sherema December 24, 2007 @ 4:53 pmMaybe Riding bike in the big city of Taiwan as a daily transportation equipment is not popular or comfortable. But riding bike Tour de Taiwan have become more and more popular. There are many blogs(in chinese) about that http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=320&t=327030&last=4450135
Comment by observer December 28, 2007 @ 12:41 pmVisit their blogs,you maybe change your opinion about “On 2 wheels in The island”
Hello there, I’d love to read your articles and other blogs in Chinese about issues concerning Taiwan such as riding a bike or else but unfortunately, I can’t read chinese, I can speak it though lol..sorry about that.
Ben Hakam
Comment by benhakam December 30, 2007 @ 12:01 pmHi,
Comment by accident compensation claim February 6, 2008 @ 10:27 amI like the way you write ..Its really different and interesting … keep the momentum going ..
brilliant. .
Thanks for reading and for your comment as well, I appreciate it!
Comment by benhakam March 8, 2008 @ 2:18 pm