Taiwan has long carried the nickname 行人地獄 (hell for pedestrians) — a label that went mainstream after a Facebook advocacy page of the same name went viral in late 2021 and was subsequently picked up by international outlets. The roots of the problem are structural: when Taiwan modernised its roads in the 1960s, it drew heavily on American planning guidelines that prioritised cars over people, and as other countries later revised their approach to protect pedestrians and cyclists, Taiwan did not keep pace. The result is a patchwork infrastructure where even existing pavements are frequently obstructed — narrow roads lined with parked scooters, lamp posts, transformer boxes, and shop fronts spilling onto the kerb routinely force pedestrians into traffic lanes.

The cultural dimension is equally important to understand. Taiwan has more than 14 million registered scooters — roughly one for every 1.6 people — a density rooted in the island’s rapid post-war industrialisation, when affordable Japanese-designed scooters became the practical solution to underdeveloped public transport. For many Taiwanese, riding a scooter is simply how life is lived: a habit passed down through families rather than a considered choice. Crucially, as one advocate put it, it is not that people love scooters so much as they lack better options — a distinction worth holding onto, because it points to a systemic problem rather than a cultural flaw. There is also a widely observed phenomenon, noted both by locals and foreign residents, that the warmth Taiwanese people display in everyday interactions can seem to evaporate entirely behind the wheel.

The picture is, however, genuinely changing. A fatal accident in December 2022 — in which a city bus struck a foreign man, his Taiwanese wife, and their infant son at a pedestrian crossing, killing the mother and child — shocked the public and accelerated calls for legislative reform. A 2023 amendment to the Road Traffic Safety Rules introduced a legal obligation for drivers to yield to pedestrians at crossings, with meaningful fines for non-compliance, and enforcement campaigns have followed. Whether this translates to a noticeably safer experience on the ground depends considerably on where you are: Taipei, with its mature MRT network and growing pedestrian zones, offers a meaningfully different environment to smaller cities or rural areas where public transport can be sparse or effectively non-existent. The gap between legislation and lived reality is narrowing, but it is narrowing unevenly — and where you notice that gap most clearly will tell you a great deal about the part of Taiwan you are in.