Taiwanese Scooter Traffic: How The Tide Comes In

By Santosh

India sure has a lot of bikes and scooters, in fact it is now home to the highest number of two-wheelers in the world (around 14 million). As a result, our traffic is a nightmare, and the lack of respect for road safety makes it the most dangerous place in the world to drive or ride. Taiwan too, has its road safety issues, but two wheeler traffic behaves very differently to our country at traffic lights at least.

Video: Volkswagen Torture Testing

We came across this video in Taiwan where a sea of what must be thousands of scooters waiting at a red light. The scene looks to be an off ramp but if you think its going to be a cacophony of horning, angry commuters, you couldn't be more wrong. The scene is almost calming in a strange way, since all the motorists are calm and move forward safely and slowly in such an orderly fashion, that it's a sight to see.

There is no unnecessary honking when the lights turn green, like we see in India. We will never understand why people horn when the light turns green from way back in the traffic build up. Are the people in front going to grow pairs of wings and move aside for you? Nope. We might as well reside to the fate that we all have to deal with traffic, so let's be polite to each other and make commuting less of the hellish experience that it is. We have much to learn from Taiwan.

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Article Published On: Thursday, July 17, 2014, 11:08 [IST]
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