Helmets Ain't Cool

The traffic in Taipei is incredible. Cars and scooters swim through the city streets like schools of fish. Lisa and I have flirted with the idea of buying a scooter here to get around on. Maybe a little Vespa, how romantic! Very Roman holiday. Riding a scooter is a large part of living in Taiwan. The roads of this tiny island can't accommodate every citizen's desire to own a car, and although the relatively new MRT in Taipei has eased the pressure on the city's roads, scooters are the populace's main alternative. To demonstrate the sheer volume of scooters here, Taipei city's population is over 2.6 million people; the number of registered scooters is over 1 million. Hence, riding a scooter is a large part of Taiwanese culture.


Prior to 1998, wearing a helmet whilst riding your scooter in Taiwan was not a requirement by law. Needless to say the culture here has embraced this new law half-heartedly. I can liken this lack of enthusiasm to wear helmets with skateboarding culture in Australia, where attempts to make skateboarders wear helmets has been rejected by the community, and hence the inconsistent application of the law. Entrenched cultures are resistant to change. Most of Taipei's 1 million scooter drivers wear not-so-much helmets but tin hats. They can be bought by the roadside for around $200NT or $8AUS. These thin pieces of metal are a superficial level of compliance with the authorities, enough to keep the police off your back. Youths can be seen wearing t-shirts chastising the helmet laws. Wearing a helmet ain't cool.


The practical benefits of wearing a proper helmet are, of course, obvious. And the predictable downside of wearing hats instead of helmets is the potential danger to the human skull. Combine a lack of protection with the bedlum of traffic in Taiwan and you have a potent recipe for death. In fact, 70% of all traffic fatalities in Taipei City are scooter operators. Many are victims of the greater problem in Taiwanese society: the lack of respect for traffic laws, drink-driving, and the lack of effeciency in policing Taiwan's roads. A trip around the island by car is a tour of traffic lunacy. In the mountains, buses and scooters overtaking cars on blind corners. Cliff-hugging roads with inappropriate barriers. People running red lights. Cars and motorcyclists not yielding to emergency vehicles. There are few guarantees as a pedestrian in Taiwan. Chaos is the law. Drivers and street-walkers alike seem to have developed a sixth sense for predicting traffic. Most of the time scooters and cars weave through the streets in schools with a kind of chaotic harmony, but it takes so little for that harmony to be broken.


Just the other day Lisa and I were walking to the bus-stop when we witnessed our first major collision. A man on a scooter had been hit by a car. He was wearing a cheap helmet - better than a tin hat, but not by much. Unconscious, eyes flickering in the back of his head. The typical thoughts ran through our minds - frustration, despair and ultimately sadness. The traffic in Taipei seems to mirror the island's path to modernisation. Intoxicating, blindingly quick, inconsistent and at times dangerous. Goodbye romantic ideas of driving a scooter in Taiwan. I'll take my chances with the footpath and the MRT.