Driving In Taiwan

3706 Words15 Pages
Driving in Taiwan is extremely funny, a continuous discovery of mindsets and rules that can be very different from yours. Although sometimes challenging, driving in Taiwan is certainly within reach of anyone who has got the driving license in Italy, as myself :)) What happens when Taiwanese people drive in the rain Jan.14, 2011 in Taiwan The world is full of Asian stereotypes of bad driving. And for good reason. I can’t speak for the rest of Asia but as far as Taiwan goes the roads are pretty bad. It’s perfectly normal to drive all over the place, not use your indicators and slowly pull out infront of traffic coming right at you at speed in Taiwan. The problem however arises when drivers used to this haphazard driving culture travel overseas and forget that road rules actually mean something. A few months ago I was out on a leisurely weekend ride on the Long Haul Trucker when I looked up and realised I was riding into something nasty. [pic]I could have turned back but decided to press on. Riding through a storm, even as overbearing as that one looked, isn’t all that hard. You just flick on the dynamo lights, concentrate a bit harder and go a bit slower. As I got into the mountains it began to bucket down and it wasn’t long before I had to get off the Trucker and whack on my waterproof gear. Aware that it wasn’t just a drizzle, but rather a deluge, I continued through the mountains but with noticeable caution. In the back of my mind was the thought that no matter how careful I was, all it’d take is one crazy Taiwanese driver in a hurry to drop the kids off, get back to work, get to lunch or some other errand at the speed of light to knock me down and it’d be game over. As I traversed the ups and downs of Taiwan’s mountains in the downpour, I came across one such driver. [pic]This poor bugger had completely driven his car into the ditch on the side of the
Open Document