| Summary |
In accordance with the 2020 White Paper on Transportation Policy, the objectives in this project include developing drivers’ safe driving abilities and regulating drivers’ safe driving practices. A comprehensive review on regular small vehicle and light or heavy motorcycle driving training, driver’s license test, and driver’s management system has been conducted to study and improve the practices to be in line with the world. Finally, specific recommendations and reform plans have been proposed to effectively reduce the risk of accidents for motorcycle riders, elderly drivers, those prone to accidents, those with specific medical conditions, repeat offenders, novice drivers, drivers without a license, and other focused groups.
Motorcycles account for more serious road safety problems in Taiwan. The statistical data of the traffic casualties in the recent 5 years shows that about 90% are accidents involving motorcycles. The analysis shows that about 1/3 of parties to motorcycle accidents are young people aged 18~24, about 10% are novice drivers who obtained the driver’s license for motorcycles less than one year ago; elderly drivers aged above 65 have shown a yearly increase trend in accident ratios in the
recent 5 years. Moreover, the accident mortality rates for elderly drivers of motorcycles rapidly increase with age; among all the car and motorcycle accidents, about 12% are drivers without a license; in addition, violations cited at the scene have shown positive growth trends in the last five years. In particular, about 15% of drivers have traffic violations on record within one year after getting the driver’s license for motorcycles; it has been observed that the car and motorcycle violation recidivism at 1- month intervals is about 10%, showing rampant violation recidivism.
Through a comparative analysis on domestic and foreign system related literatures, an analysis on data-driven domestic road safety information, interviews with competent authorities regarding their demand, and seminar with experts and scholars, the opinions of all sides concerning the current domestic driver training, test, and management related regulations and management measures have been extensively collected. This project adopts the concept of drivers’ management life cycle to
move toward the goals of “training for all, rigorous tests, and emphasis for management”. Targeting the three aspects of driver training, test, and management, “improvement on training and test system for motorcycles, improvement on driver’s license renewal for elderly drivers, active identification of high-risk driving mechanisms and periodic license renewal for all, the demerit
points system and novice driver management, improvement plans for managing drivers without a license” have been formulated.
Based on the order of priority and difficulty of execution, short-term, middle-term, and long-term plan recommendations have been put forward to serve as a reference for the Ministry of Transportation and Communications when devising relevant system improvement practices. |
