It seems the vast majority of Taipei travels on scooters. Ranging in size from 90 to 125cc they outnumber motorcycles of the same size by at least 50 to 1. I would assume that is because of their versatility. It is more difficult to ride three people on a motorcycle. Small children can't stand on the floor boards of a motorcycle. Highchairs that are used to carry infants can't be placed on a motorcyle. One person told me that there are more than a million scooters in Taipei alone, and I don't doubt it.

Traffic movement on the street is a wonder to watch. I wouldn't want to participate as a driver but I found it to be very entertaining. It seems that everyone knows what to expect and that is to expect anything. The cars and cabs show a lot of evidence of being scraped against other cars and cabs. They drive extremely close to each other. At red lights I saw cars and scooters turn right on red. They also turned left on red as well as went straight on red. I didn't see one scooter involved in an accident and only two fender benders while I was there. This was amazing to me as it seemed to be a study in mass confusion.

Encountering scooters driving on the sidewalk was not unusual. Even the mailman drove a scooter and as pictured above he was not against riding on the sidewalk. Scooters are available for the handicapped. They are regular issue models that are modified by adding an additional wheel on each side of the rear drive wheel. Of course there were trucks for hauling goods, but there were a large number of three wheel "cycle trucks" when a scooter just wasn't big enough. Before the mass influx of scooters bicycles were the norm. Some bicycles were seen but not many. I did see large numbers of them in racks at the subway/train stations.

I was only in one cab that I would label as reckless. By chance we had gotten the same driver two days in a row from the hotel to the job site. The first day was normal aggressive driving. I was impressed with the cab as it had fresh flowers in a vase on the dash and it had a video screen showing young Asian women playing in the surf. The second day was terrifying for me. I was sure he was going to kill someone. On a four lane street he accelerated to a high rate of speed and passed both lanes of cars that were in front of us by crossing the double yellow line and approaching opposing traffic head on. He almost ran down a scooter from behind. He was a very angry person that morning. The women in the video seemed unconcerned. Upon deplaning I noted his cab number as 023 and vowed to not ride with him again. Of course with thousands of cabs in the city what was the chance of that happening twice let alone three times?? Next morning when we walked out there he was again (!) in line as the next cab up. Did I detect a smirk and an evil eye?? Damn right I did and we refused the cab. We conveyed our feelings to the door man and a nice Japanese family was ushered into that cab for a ride to the airport. I indicated to the adult male rider in the front seat that he should buckle up by drawing my hand diagonally across my chest. He understood and as he was doing that I added a pointed finger at the side of my head drawing circles in the air and then pointed at the driver. It was the best I could do to warn him that the driver was crazy.

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