The Zero Pedestrian Deaths Promotion Alliance yesterday invited the mayors of the six special municipalities, presidential and legislative candidates, and everyone else to take part in its rally on Aug. 20 titled “Vision Zero — Stop Killing Pedestrians.”
The alliance’s representatives made the announcement in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, and were joined by legislators from across party lines and representatives from other civic groups.
“We ask the government to respond to our demand to return the right of way to pedestrians. We believe that if more people support our call for traffic management reform, the government will have to face the problem and not take 100 years to accomplish it,” said the woman who started the alliance, nicknamed YC.
Photo: CNA
“Therefore, we are inviting everyone to join us on Ketagalan Boulevard on Aug. 20, to let the whole of Taiwan, or even the whole world, know that we will not tolerate it any longer. Please give us a safe road to walk on,” she said.
The rally aims to promote five main demands: improve pedestrian facilities, reform driver education programs and qualification examinations, enhance law enforcement to protect pedestrians’ right of way, revise traffic regulations, and require each city and county to create a proposal for achieving zero pedestrian deaths.
National Association for Firefighters’ Rights chairperson Chang yung-wei (張詠惟) said that firefighters responded to more than 1.3 million accidents and medical emergencies last year.
Chang said that 1 million people were taken to hospital and about 300,000 of them were injured in a traffic accident.
In one case, Taoyuan’s Longtan Fire Station in May last year responded to an traffic accident involving a 14-year-old junior-high school student, who had been walking home from school on the side of a road that had no sidewalks, he said.
She was killed a car that was driven by a person with epilepsy, he said.
Chang said he could not forget watching bodycam footage recorded by his clearly anxious colleague, which included scattered debris form the car and a stretcher covered in blood.
That it is only one of the cases firefighters must face, and while firefighters wish to never encounter something like that again, that road is still unsafe, he said.
Many civic groups have proposed improvement plans for different road intersections where traffic accidents often occur, but the government has only increased its law enforcement efforts and installed speed cameras, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Sandy Yu (游毓蘭) said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said she represents the party’s legislative caucus, which gives its regards to the alliance.
They would ask the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to draft a traffic safety basic act, regulating poor intersection designs, the improvement of driver education programs and law enforcement to protect pedestrians’ rights.
Statistics suggest the ministry has not worked hard enough to improve the “traffic hell” or reduce pedestrian deaths, New Power Party Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said, adding that he hates it when he hears government officials saying that a new measure might “cause too much social disturbance.”
“It is almost Father’s Day, and allowing the current traffic management policies to go on might cause many fathers to lose their child, or many children to lose their father. Would that not that be a big social disturbance?” he said, adding that hopefully the drafted traffic safety basic act could be passed in the next legislative session.
Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Lai Hsiang-ling (賴香伶) said that her face was injured in a traffic accident when she was riding a scooter with her child about 10 years ago, but many traffic signals and signs are still difficult to understand.
As traffic around schools is often more dangerous, the ministry should listen to teachers’ and parents’ suggestions, too, she added.
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