Traffic in Taiwan has long been a source of anxiety for residents and visitors alike. The numbers alone tell a sobering story. In 2022, there were more than 375,000 recorded accidents across the island, leading to over 3,000 deaths and 389,269 injuries, TVBS reported at the time.

Motorcyclists – in the form of small scale 100-150CC scooters - bore the brunt, with nearly 2,000 fatalities, while close to 400 pedestrians were also killed, ThinkChina reported. This equates to more than eight lives lost each day, often with at least one involving a pedestrian.

The problem has shown little sign of easing. By the end of 2024, Taiwan recorded close to 400,000 accidents in a single year, leaving more than 360 pedestrians dead, CNA reported in May. In the first nine months alone, there were over 290,000 accidents, resulting in more than 2,000 deaths and over 386,000 injuries, TVBS said.

In recent years Taiwan has acquired an unenviable reputation. CNN once described the island as a “living hell for pedestrians”, a phrase that resonated with both locals and foreign commentators. It was also a comment that caused embarrassment at governmental level – for a while – before it was quietly forgotten and things returned to normal as they so often do.

Much of the issue lies in the very design of Taiwan’s cities. Nearly half of the roads wider than twelve metres lack proper pavements, CNA reports, with pedestrian areas merely painted green at the side of the street. And as any visitor to a Taiwanese town or city will attest, those dedicated pedestrian areas that do exist are often blocked by illegally parked scooters, vendors or cars encroaching on pedestrian space. All of these hazards to pedestrians are routinely ignored by police and in large-part have become invisible to a populace long since blase about road safety being enforced.

Add to that the tendency of drivers to treat the rules of the road as loose guidelines, running red lights or swerving suddenly across lanes with no use of an indicator, or failing to give way to people on zebra crossings, and life for pedestrians in Taiwan is a game of life-and-death every time they step outside their front door.

The consequences of this disregard are tragically familiar. In December 2022, a mother and her infant were struck and killed in Taichung when a bus turned left across a pedestrian crossing local media recorded. Five months later, in Tainan, a three-year-old girl was killed by a car making an illegal left turn as she crossed with her mother. Both cases prompted investigations for negligent homicide and saw political figures making all the right noises, but did little to alter driving behaviour on the ground. A few days later the news-cycle moved on.

Anecdotal accounts capture the culture of disregard for traffic regulations in Taiwan just as starkly.

In one widely shared video, a woman attempting to cross a zebra crossing was ignored by twenty-five consecutive vehicles, prompting exasperated online comments about Taiwan being “actual pedestrian hell”.

Others lament the almost total absence of enforcement: “I rarely see police enforce traffic laws,” one foreign resident observed, while another commentator said, “It's endemic to a weak local government with no National oversight to enforce traffic laws.”

The writer of this piece, knocked off a scooter in a hit-and-run in 2019 was informed by police he was at fault for moving his scooter after having to stand up with a dislocated shoulder as no-one stopped to help. He has also spoken to multiple police officers at busy junctions around Taiwan over a decade in the country, pointing out drivers running red lights, scooters loaded with up to four people - and chidren with no helmets - or just vehicles parked illegally several metres away. Repeatedly the response was a shrug of the shoulders and disinterest.  

Beyond urban chaos, Taiwan’s infrastructure also contributes to the danger. The Suhua Highway, famed for its coastal scenery alond the east coast, has long been notorious for its narrow lanes and landslide-prone cliffs, so perilous that until safety upgrades in 2020, fatal accidents were almost an inevitability. Increasingly in recent years, reports of truck drivers – often seen speeding along this route – having caused accidents with much smaller cars resulting in injury or death are relatively common.

Underlying these dangers is another systemic issue - scooters.

Scooters are an omnipresent force with Taiwan home to around 14.6mn in all for a population of around 23mn, and these typically cheap runarounds account for around half of all fatalities.Their sheer number creates a volatile mix of cars, buses, lorries and scooters jostling for space. At the same time, traffic laws are often seen as optional.

New pedestrian-protection measures and the installation of cameras have helped – slightly - but enforcement is still very patchy. Fines for offenders are a common butt of jokes being so low as to cause little inconvenience to Taiwanese drivers.

As such, the government of Taiwan, under mounting pressure, has begun to act, but as cynics might say, only because the international spotlight was focused on an aspect of life in Taiwan that doesn’t show the nation in a positive manner.

In May 2025, following an incident in which an elderly driver ploughed into pedestrians outside a school, killing four and injuring eleven, government ministers finally announced reforms. These included earlier licence renewals for elderly drivers and stricter testing, measures expected to take effect in 2026 - and for some reason, not immediately.

Early figures from this year – 2025 - do suggest tentative progress though: total road deaths fell to a six year low in the first two months of the year – to ‘just’ 469 TVBS reports.

Yet the improvements, while welcome, are modest against the backdrop of the scale of the crisis. Taiwan’s roads remain among the most dangerous in the developed world not because of any single failing, but due to a web of interconnected factors the government routinely fails to tackle: outdated infrastructure, a car- and scooter-centric culture, limited enforcement by the nation’s police force, and only recently accelerated reforms.

For now, Taiwan’s road deaths are higher than the total number of those lost in the 9-11 attacks each year, or on the home front, around the same number as are killed in drowning, fires, and workplace accidents, combined, and then multiplied by six - each and every year.

Until this changes, stepping onto the street in Taiwan will remain an act of risk that no modern democracy should tolerate and those overseas pondering a trip to see all the positives that time in Taiwan offers, should think twice before booking a flight.