Wasai--Driving in Taiwan

What the heck. Are you all crazy? It's madness. Where is the organization, the rhyme and reason? These were my first thoughts regarding driving in Taiwan. Coming from the US where lanes are clearly marked, and heaven forbid you cross over without proper notification or sufficient time allowed lest you get the finger or worse, I was in complete shock when we took our first taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. I thought we were going to crush the pedestrians, mow over the enormous numbers of scooters, and for sure get into an altercation with fellow motorcar drivers for cutting them off. Nothing happened. We arrived safe and sound, no accidents, no causalities, no road rage.

Being here now for close to three months I have found the logic behind the madness of driving in Taiwan. Taiwan drivers are very deliberate. They have a destination and their mission is to get to it. The roadways are shared by all; cars, trucks, scooters, bicycles, and pedestrians. All of whom know where they intend to go. Accidents and road rage are avoided by adhering to this deliberateness. It is a different mindset for foreigners living here, but once you get the hang of it in makes sense. When walking you must be mindful of the traffic, but in turn they are mindful of you too. Following the walk and don’t walk lights one can ensure safe arrival. Scooters and bicycles have lanes designated specifically to them. Of course scooters also cross over lanes and drive in regular lanes, but for the most part resign themselves to the far right of the road. Cars and trucks typically drive in the left lane crossing over only when turning or parking. The speed of traffic here is very different too. Things are much slower which in turn cuts down on the accidents. “Stopping on a dime” is actually possible because traffic typically does not exceed 25 miles per hour.

These realizations came after a short time of being here. I now drive a scooter everywhere and am very comfortable in doing so. Deliberate, slow, and steady will get you there, unscathed, every time.

Submitted to Wasai Taiwan by: Meagan Atchley
(Hsinchu, Taiwan – Houston Texas)

Wasai--- Cars first, people second

One shock experience I had in Taiwan was the massive amount of traffic and motorcycles. I’ve been so used to traffic in America, that I was not prepared for the way people drive in Taiwan. Actually, I thought the traffic in Berkeley was pretty bad since there were people everywhere. As a driver I was constantly frustrated with the pedestrians. In America, cars must yield to people. But in Taiwan, people must yield to cars, or else they will suffer dire consequences! It took me a few days to get used to the fact that as a pedestrian, I have the least amount of power to control traffic in Taiwan. I was constantly fearful of crossing the streets. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure where the street was since motorcycles would be passing through marketplaces and residential areas alike. Even if the street signs said “One Way”, there would still be two-way traffic!! I was also amazed to see how Taiwanese people carry almost everything on their motorcycles. From little babies, kids standing on crates, dogs, bags of groceries, computers, sometimes their entire family. Whenever I would look down from our tour bus onto the streets, I would be concerned if the bus saw the motorcyclists driving right next to it. How do these people survive Taiwanese traffic?! When I was taking a taxi to the airport on my last day in Taiwan, we bumped into some traffic on the highway. I noticed, to my utter shock, that there were multiple cars using the shoulder of the highway to get past the traffic!! This would be unimaginable in the States. No one would dare to use the shoulder as if it was another lane!! Where were the Highway Cops?! Or…are there any?! By this point, I have been surprised by Taiwanese culture so much, that all I could do was laugh. Taiwanese traffic is definitely one of a kind.


Submitted to Wasai Taiwan by: Caroline Ogasawara
(Hsinchu, Taiwan--- San Francisco, the U.S.)

Wasai--- Sidewalks

At home we have sidewalks. They're places at the SIDE of the road where people WALK. They're safety zones for pedestrians. Sometimes there is even a strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk. We even have rules of etiquette for the proper to use of sidewalks. For instance, a man usually walks closest to the street if he's walking with a woman.

Here, in Taiwan, we have spaces in front of buildings that look like sidewalks to the Westerner but are hardly the same. The sidewalks here are much wider and used for much more than just walking. They're used by small vendors to set up tables of goods or food carts. They're also used as parking lots for motor scooters, and driveways to get to the parking spaces. To the Westerner they seem more like an obstacle course than a safety zone.

Submitted to Wasai Taiwan by: Peggie Scott (Hsinchu)

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Wasai---Scooter Flows

Nothing quite compares to driving in Asia. Especially since I’m broke, and not wanting to pay the high price for gas, almost always ride my scooter. It took me at least a month to really figure the scooter situation out. One of my friends had to fill me in on the ‘scooter box’ rules in big intersections, and if it wasn’t for them, I’m sure I would never have got it. Another one of my friends described the myriad of scooters on the road like a river of water, flowing around everything else. They couldn’t have been more correct. In many ways it’s really a miracle that so few people get hurt, with so many people moving in so many different directions all at the same time. And what’s more, many are not wearing very much by the way of protective clothing in case of an accident. On the flip side, when I do drive my car I’ve often been shocked by the way this river of scooters simply flows around me as I drive, but never quite touches me, and I have learned that I can drive with confidence that no one will hit me.




Now it’s been ages since I’ve driven in the States, but I still remember some big differences. Most come from the simple discrepancies in circumstance derived from more available land, and thus wider and more open roads, and much fewer motorcycles. In the United States the situation is so different that we often have problems with people falling asleep while driving, because you can go for a half hour without really thinking about what you are doing while driving. And my whole attitude about driving was different in the States. While I usually drive carefully in Taiwan for fear of getting hit by a car or scooter, back home I drove with a different type of fear. That was the fear of the police. What I’ve observed in Taiwan is that usually it doesn’t matter what you do on the roads, you probably won’t get a ticket unless you speed by one of those ticket giving cameras on the highways. But in the States it seems that the cops come out of nowhere to get you, and always want to ticket you for any mistakes you make along your way.

Ryan Barber

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Discover Taiwan: transportation

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