Comparative safety

The first time I went back to America, I had tasers pointed at me within five minutes of landing and didn't really see any reason to ever go back. This time, I maintained a constant barrage of complaints about how terrible America is to live in compared to Taiwan, but I started to notice some of America's appeal. Of course, I didn't mention this to anyone.

One of my favorite stories to shock Taiwanese people with is that in the year before I came here, I had guns pointed at me twice and had my motorcycle stolen twice. We had a man masturbating in the window at Lzyk (I told her it's considered a complement in America, but she didn't think it was funny), and more shootings, rapes and murders than I can even remember. Those events rarely make the news in my old community, and when it does, it's usually a spectacular one, in some way. I worked in triage of an emergency room for two years, and I can assure you that 99% of our shootings were never reported in the news.

That kind of crime doesn't exist in Taiwan. Well, we did have a gangland execution in a parking lot a few months back, and Taiwan does get about 250 GSW deaths a year, but I once had 40 victims come into triage at once, back in the US. It just doesn't compare.

I once saw Taiwanese national news coverage of a man stealing a scooter from a sidewalk in Tainan.

Taiwan makes up for its relative lack of crime with its massive negligence. People who are probably civil, if not perfectly nice outside of their cars, lose control of their emotions behind the wheel. I have had so many maniac bus drivers that I had already decided to stop riding on them completely, before the recent crash that burned a busload of tourists alive.  Airplanes routinely crash here. Hundreds of people have died in crashes in the short time that I've been here, despite the tiny number of people flying compared to North America.

Air pollution deaths are a secret here. I haven't been able to verify it, but the rumour is that air pollution research can't be published in mandarin by law, only in foreign languages.

It's a law enforcement problem, and not, as the latest initiative on the heels of the bus fire would suggest, a maintenance problem. It's an operator problem. America has an outrageous violent crime, the sort of thing only seen elsewhere in the third world. Taiwan has a similar safety situation, only not with crime, but with pollution and transportation. Having recently been in both countries, I have to say that America seems a lot more appealing than it did before my trip.