A driver who holding a driver’s license in Taiwan is required to obey the Regulation of Road Safety as well as the Regulation of Freeway Traffic Management while driving his/her vehicle on the road. Once the driver breaks these regulations, the driver and/or his vehicle will be punished according to the Road Traffic Safety and Penalty Act. There are two kinds of sanctions. One is vehicle-based, and the other is driver-based. In the vehicle-based sanctions, penalty varies depending on the level of traffic violation; it may include detaining the license plate of vehicle for some periods, suspending vehicle license plate for some periods and revoking vehicle license plate forever.
In the driver-based sanctions, the penalties include fining, cumulating traffic violation scores, prohibiting driving at the scene, suspending the driver license for a period, and suspending the driver license forever. Among these penalties, ALLR is the most serious one and makes the drivers have no chance to get their licenses back no matter how they revise their attitudes and correct their behaviors. In other words, the present driver license suspension policy in Taiwan has no rehabilitative design for those people who were punished by ALLR.
3.1 The development of the law
During last thirty years, the democratization of Taiwan was not mature enough and the social system was significantly influenced by the martial law. The car was not popular and the car ownership was quite low at that time. The most popular transportation tools were bicycles, motorcycles and buses. The evaluation of social function was emphasized on the order of society, the safety of traffic, and the security of nation. Under such kind of circumstance, the law of driver license suspension was expanding both in lifetime and a certain period. The longest period suspension is ALLR.
Taiwan has grown rapidly over the last thirty years, with increasing numbers of motor
vehicles resulting in a higher frequency and severity of traffic safety problems. In most countries there are two ways of revoking a driver’s license: one is ALR and the other is judicial license revocation; only the former is imposed in Taiwan. Because of the lingering influence of the martial law, abolished in 1987, and the rigorous need to limit traffic accidents, the authorities in Taiwan have continued to believe that rigorous punishment can reduce traffic violations. Thus, sanctions have been adopted for offenders who commit hit-and-run offences, causing death/or injury or drunk driving causing death/or serious injury, which include criminal penalties, civil compensation and ALLR.
The ALLR policy in Taiwan was started in 1968. The Article 55 of the Road Traffic Safety and Penalty Act: The man, who used a vehicle to commit a crime and was sentenced to a certain criminal penalty, whose driver license will be revoked whole his/her lifetime. The articles of such penalty have been broadly increased during the past thirty years from only one article in 1968 to nine articles in 2001. These nine Articles are: (1) did not make the payment at a toll station and caused the clerk death/or injury; (2) overloading vehicle length/or width/or height caused death/or serious injury; (3) drove vehicle with breathing alcohol concentration exceeding 0.25 mg/dl, or taking drug and caused death/or serious injury; (4) crashed and caused death/or serious injury and rejected to do the alcohol test; (5) professional driver committed a crime during his operation time and was sentenced to guilty; (6) violated the regulation of railway level crossing and crashed; (7) drove a car to commit a crime and was sentenced to guilty; (8) resisted the checking of traffic police and caused death/or injury;
(9) committed a hit-and-run offence and caused death/or injury.
The number of ALLR Article was only one in 1968 and increased to nine in 2001.
However, the authority revised the law and increased the articles in the past was only based on the belief that the more chaos the traffic condition is, the more rigorous law should be applied. The possible impacts on the human rights of people punished by ALLR were not
carefully considered in each law revision. Present nine Articles for ALLR can be classified into eight items that showed in Figure 3 and summarized in Table 2.
D i d n 't M a k e
Figure 3: Traffic violations resulting ALLR
Table 2: Present Articles for ALLR (January, 2001)
Articles Contents Time of Revision
27-2 Did not make the payment at a toll station, bridge, tunnel, or ferry, and caused clerk death/or injury, suspending the driver license whole lifetime.
January 1997 29-4 The car was overloading vehicle length/or width/or height, and caused
death/or serious injury.
January 2001 35-1 Drove vehicle with breathing alcohol concentration exceeding 0.25 mg/dl,
or using drug and caused death/or serious injury.
January 1997 35-3 Crashed and caused death/or serious injury and rejected to do the alcohol
test.
January 1997 37-2 Professional car driver committed a crime during his operation time and
was sentenced to guilty.
July 1981 54 Violated the traffic regulation of railway level crossing and crashed. July 1975 61-1-1 Drove a car to commit a crime and was sentenced to guilty. February 1968 61-1-2 Resisted the checking of traffic police and caused death/or injury. July 1975 62-1 Hit-and-run and caused death/or injury. July 1975
3.2 Current results of ALLR implementing
According to official statistics, there were around 3000 drivers whose driver licenses
were suspended in Taiwan during the period from 1993 to 2002. It implies that about three hundred drivers were deprived their rights to drive lifetime each year during the past ten years.
However, this amount is getting higher in recent three years and about 800 cases per year.
Within them, there are two major groups. One is hit-and-run and results death/or injury, and another is drunk driving and causes death/or serious injury.
In Taiwan, a driver who commits a hit-and-run offence causing death or injury or a drunk driving offence causing death or serious injury, will be prosecuted by a public prosecutor and awarded a criminal penalty of up to 5 years in jail. However, a hit-and-run offence not causing serious injury may not always be determined as criminal, it depends on whether or not the victim seeks court action. Similar to a criminal penalty, civil compensation varies with the consequences of the accident. The primary aim of ALLR, a driver-based sanction, is to revoke driving privileges and keep offenders off the road forever. In the present licensing system design they have no opportunity for rehabilitation. In other words, offenders have no chance of being rehabilitated or of having their driving privileges reinstated, regardless of how much they have corrected their behaviors or have the desire to abide by the laws of the road and society. Moreover, according to the present ALLR regulations, all privileges of operating motor vehicles, including cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles etc. are revoked at the same time.