In the US, these conditions would lead to short tempers but not in Taipei.

Never before have I seen such calm, collected, polite, and suicidal drivers.

Who needs an entire car length to change lanes? Your car is much narrower than it is long, so you can just aim in the space sharply and squeeze in. Need to make a right turn from the left lane? No problem, just go for it! Do you see somebody ready to vacate one of the preciously few parking spaces spread around the city? Go ahead and double park on a busy street and wait for them to pull out. Nobody will even honk at you, let alone bat an eye.

But wait, it gets worse.

In the US, riding a motorcycle or scooter is extremely dangerous. Because so few people ride, drivers do not look out for bikers and often just blindly slam into them. Taipei is a bit different.

From all appearances, for every car on the streets of Taipei, there are two scooters. Sidewalks make excellent impromptu scooter parking lots, and they are often completely covered with scooters. But the streets are far worse. Scooters weave between cars like light cycles from Tron. If you matched scooters and cars in these volumes in the US, it would be a killing field.

Amazingly, we never saw a single accident during our stay in Taipei, though we did see a few smashed up vehicles. Taipei drivers pay much more attention to what they are doing than US drivers do, simply because they have to, and they actually look before they turn or change lanes. Because most Taipei driving is slower than 30MPH, even when accidents do occur, we do not expect they are as deadly as US crashes.

If you drive in the US half as aggressively as the average Taipei drive, you will lose your license in a week. Of course, you will also have a lot of fun doing it. If you ever happen to visit Taipei, we strong recommend you do not rent a car.

We hope you enjoyed this second special report from Taipei. Stay tuned for more…

Jon Simon
Assistant Editor