Revisiting Taiwan as a "living hell" for road safety with Dr. Tsu-jui Cheng

The Strait Up Podcast

Today we tackle an issue that is unavoidable if one lives in Taiwan, which is road safety. And I don’t just mean road safety for drivers on the road, but also for pedestrians on the sidewalk. However as you will discover in this episode, Taiwan often lacks sidewalks on many roads. Roads in Taiwan thus must share their narrow spaces among pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and everything else that needs to move. Taiwan’s chaotic streets are well known to residents, but most international audiences will likely only have heard about this issue after CNN published an article that referred to Taiwan as a “living hell" for pedestrians in December 2022. Since then, it has become a hot topic both in international and Taiwanese media.

So, to discuss this issue I have on the show today Dr. Tsu-jui Cheng (鄭祖睿), Assistant Professor in Transport Studies at National Cheng Kung University. Dr. Zheng’s research focuses on sustainable mobility governance and transport equity, but brings a wide international perspective and valuable insights related to traffic safety and governance. (See his recent contribution to SLOCAT Transport Report here)

This was a great conversation, and I should be having a sort of companion episode coming out soon about motorcycle ownership in Taiwan, which is closely related to many issues discussed in this episode.

This episode will also be available on YouTube podcasts, so if you prefer a video version, please go check that out.

In this conversation, we talk about data on the number of road deaths in Taiwan compared to other countries, the factors that may be causing so many accidents, the surprisingly important issue of parking, the lack of sidewalks in Taiwan, roads, streets, and "stroads", the lack of enforcement, building regulations, traffic safety as a political issue, and much more.