The Meiling Bus Crash:A Wake-up Call

On the evening of December 3, 2006, a tour bus plunged off the mountainside at Meiling, in Tainan County's Nanhsi Township. Twenty-two of the passengers--members of the Kaohsiung Municipal Ding Jin Elementary School PTA--were killed and 24 were injured. Among them, married couples perished, and of a family of four, three died and one was left injured. It has been called one of the worst vehicle accidents in the history of Taiwan's highways.

Also fresh in our memories is a bus accident involving a tour group from mainland China just two months before (October 2, 2006). Their bus overturned on the New Central Cross-Island Highway in Hsinyi Township, Nantou County, resulting in five deaths and 14 injuries.

Two years earlier, in October 2004, a Hong Kong tour group was involved in an accident on Taipei County Highway 102, tragically ending in five deaths and 36 injuries.

If it's 2:30, this must be Chiayi

The string of accidents involving large tour buses reveals serious problems in Taiwan's tourist transport system. What exactly are the causes of these recurring tourist accidents in the mountains?

Price wars are one reason for the poor quality of Taiwan's tourism industry. Indeed, the low-cost, multiple-attraction, "bargain basement" tourism culture inspires jokes about "Rising earlier than roosters; running faster than horses," and "No fun, just exhaustion." Tour operators are struggling to make profits; if not coming up with pretexts for adding more self-pay items, they're cutting corners. The chief reason for the Nantou accident involving the Chinese tour group was that too many shopping trips were scheduled, prompting the tourists to suspect the Taiwanese tour guides were receiving kickbacks. A dispute arose, leading to a delay in the itinerary, and the fatigued driver was speeding on the dark road to make up for lost time.

As for the cause of the Ding Jin Elementary crash, initial investigations point to several failings, including the facts that the tour bus was 18 years old with aging mechanical parts, the driver was a novice with only three days' coach driving experience, and he was speeding.

Also, the road was poorly designed, severely compromising road safety. According to surveyors, the offending stretch of road in the Meiling Scenic Area is deemed by tour operators themselves as a high-risk section, with treacherous grades and 90-degree turns. A little too much speed, and it's impossible to turn in time. The road design is clearly a problem.

"Dressing up" old buses

According to the Directorate General of Highways (DGH), there are 11,925 tour buses in Taiwan, over 30% (4,317) of which are at least ten years old; those 15 years or older number 1,448. Though there are currently no age restrictions for tour buses, it is suggested that they should be decommissioned after seven to ten years.

Regardless of age, the structures of domestic tour buses themselves are also flawed. Evidently, the overwhelming majority of tour buses and coaches are built with an imported chassis, with the body added locally. Such non-integral construction inherently results in problems such as poor seam strength and a high center of gravity. Many tour bus operators also try to reduce costs by extending the lives of their buses, even placing a new body onto an old chassis, concealing the true age of the bus by dressing it up to look like new.

Excessive height is also a problem. Tour buses in Taiwan have an average height of 3.5 meters, while Japan limits theirs to 3.2 meters. When driving on mountain roads that are too narrow and have overly tight turns, buses are likely to sway from side to side due to their high center of gravity, a serious hazard. And if cheap retreaded tires are used, the inferior traction results in increased braking distance and poor cornering, and the slightest misjudgment will cause the bus to roll or fly off the curve and into a ravine.

Taking stock

Premier Su Tseng-chang expressed displeasure at the repeated crashes, pointing out that Taiwan, though small, is covered with mountains and suffused with heavily trafficked highways; as such, the four-tier management system of the bygone era of big government should be overhauled and a new system ought to be considered.

Taiwan's roads are divided into a four-tier system of national, provincial, county and township highways, managed by different authorities and built to different standards. The Meiling crash occurred on southbound Township Road 188, but the township administration didn't have the capacity to maintain it, requiring funding assistance from the county and central governments.

Minister of Transportation and Communications Tsai Duei stated that a policy overhaul would be proposed within three months, and sections of road dangerous for tour buses would be clearly indicated. In the future, dangerous sections of national and provincial highways will be identified by a central authority and managed to unified standards.

In fact, as early as five years ago, the DGH conducted a survey of Taiwan's cities and counties, indicating 52 sections of road too steep, curved or narrow for coaches. But local governments, fearing impact to tourism and business within their jurisdictions, were unwilling to cooperate, treating them merely as suggestions and failing to impose restrictions. In response, Su stated that there should be strict enforcement in the future to ensure that the safety of tourists' lives will be top priority.

With respect to tour bus operators, the DGH proposed that, starting in 2007, tour buses exceeding 12 years of age will be forcibly withdrawn from general service, and special license plates will be issued restricting them to fixed routes and forbidding them from serving mountainous areas. Furthermore, tour bus operators will be required to display each vehicle's date of manufacture prominently on its body, for consumers' information. It is estimated that more than 3300 old tour buses will be removed from the market when that time comes, which will have a significant impact on tourism industry operating costs.

The long-standing practice of small operators licensing their vehicles under the names of larger firms will also be cracked down on. In the case of the Meiling crash, though the operator of the offending vehicle had paid a fee to register the bus under the name of a larger company, the latter was negligently oblivious of the driving conditions and the physical condition of the bus. When both firms were faced with the prospect of criminal charges after the accident occurred, the buck was passed back and forth between the company and the bus owner. Currently in Taiwan, as many as four out of ten buses are illegally sublicensed in this manner, making them ticking time bombs.

Winter vacation, the peak season for elementary and junior high school outings, is upon us, and the influx of Chinese tour groups is just around the corner. Improving road safety and quality as well as setting Taiwan's leisure and tourism culture back on track are pressing matters indeed, and reform is on the horizon for Taiwan's tourism industry.