We were driving along a city street in Taipei, looked out the window, and noticed that we happened to be alongside my sister-in-law with my son straddling the back. As stated in earlier postings, Andrew intensely dislikes having his picture taken, so I thought, "Well, may as well get a candid while he's not looking."What I didn't realize at the time was that it was not my son, but rather the expression on my sister-in-law's face that made the shot.
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Driving the streets in Taiwan is an incredible experience; I've never seen such chaos and impudent disregard for traffic laws, even in Mexico. But I looked around and had to ask myself, "Where are the accidents?" In Houston a person can't go a day without seeing at least a fender-bender, or worse. Yet in the span of four visits during 20 years of marriage I never saw a single accident. So what gives?
In time I concluded that in Taiwan absolutely nobody expects anybody to follow the rules. Thus, everyone drives super-defensively. Conversely, in the U.S. people are largely expected to obey traffic laws, and when someone pulls a bonehead stunt it's a surprise that often leads to accidents...
This concludes the Taiwan series of postings.
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