In some ways living in Taiwan is like living in a paradise. One such way is the lack of crime. In Taiwan there is zero crime. None at all. Zilch. Nada. There are some home robberies and there unfortunately is a high rate of domestic abuse, but compared to probably any other country in the world, Taiwan has no crime.
But if you've been keeping up with my blog than you know that any thought which is bad, will quickly spread across Taiwan until it's considered fact. Meaning there is one crime "fact" in Taiwan. This is if you are a female and take a taxi at night you will be raped. Of course this is not 100% true, and I've been doing some research about it and can't even see that it's 1% true. But it's one of those things that is considered to be true.
In fact while looking up crime stats I found it said that in Taiwan it is actually safer to walk alone at night than to take a taxi. Although this could be true, as walking in Taiwan is completely safe. There is no place that you will be in danger or even feel unsafe. A few years ago I was dealing with rape numbers in Taiwan, and the number of sexual assaults by strangers from walking alone at night I think was actually zero.
I also don't think there even is a word for "mugging" as that doesn't really occur here. Perhaps this is because Taiwanese aren't allowed to have guns. Also gangs usually fight each other and don't deal with civilians. Although since there are no guns, gang fights usually involve some pretty gruesome knife fights, and baseball bat beatings.
Back to the taxis. I find it quite charming that in Taiwan people are scared to take taxis at night, rather than taxis being scared to pick up people at night, like in America. To combat this the taxi companies used to have a number you can call to have them send a taxi to where you are (you even got a discount for this). Recently though, this service changed to the government, and they run the system. Again I don't think that this is because of any actual incidents, but rather just to make people feel safer. Although I am quite curious about this so when I have more free time I will dig deeper into this.
Granted I'm not belittling anything that may have happened, but it can be frustrating that sometimes the government puts so much effort into trying to solve the untrue negative "facts" in Taiwan, as opposed to the much larger problems affecting the country. Although I guess it's easier and more tolerated to say you are doing something to solve the taxi "problem" as opposed to shedding light on and dealing with the much more prevalent problem of sexual abuse inside the home.
Pictured above is a taxi calling machine inside a convenience store. Basically you go to the machine, input that you want a taxi, and a taxi will go to pick you up at that convenience store. It's a pretty great system as you can wait in the convenience store and be safe, and the machine will tell you the number of the taxi that will be sent.
Oh, did you catch that? In Taiwan late at night convenience stores are safe. What a country!
