The ex-ambassador Lu was hit by a car when he tried to cross the road. This accident covered the front page of the newspaper because he was a famous man. In Taiwan, it is very common to see people fight with the traffic when they try to cross an intersection. Most of the time, the cars don’t yield the right to the pedestrians. In addition, the traffic lights in many intersections are poorly designed which don’t allow the elders to cross the road safely. There are a lot of times the light changes to red when the elders just reach the center of the road. They cannot move on but they cannot stay on the median strip either. It is life threatening to cross the road for the elders because they are slow and there is no way for them to run for the green light. My parents who are in their eighties and nineties are good examples. Many times we have to drag them through the road because the red light turns on quickly. However, we have to work and they have to run the errands or see the doctors by themselves from time to time.

Taiwan has become an aging society; it is time for the government to look into this matter to protect the elders from an accident when they cross a road. They cannot just send the officials to console some VIPs when they are injured in a car accident.

Bih-Hua Chen
April 11, 2010
(This article was printed in United Daily)