Baptism By Fire: Scooting Through Hsinchu at 60kph

They could make an entertaining video game out of riding a scooter through heavy traffic in Taiwan, because only the brave -- or the unwitting -- would try the real thing.

Dave needed to head off to the guitar store in downtown Hsinchu, Taiwan, to get his guitar fixed, so I agreed to go when he asked. I thought we'd putter along lazily at scooter-like speeds -- say, 20 kph. Dave quickly disabused me of that notion as he sped up to 60 kph in six seconds and I held his abdomen in a vise-like death grip. Weaving in and out of traffic, paying no mind to lane markers and little attention to traffic signals, we bottomed out on every big bump. "These were made for two short Chinese people," the 170-pound Dave reminded his 200-pound friend. We saw plenty of people accelerating through red lights, not just yellow ones, and I asked, "Does anyone here obey the traffic laws?"

Dave laughed. "You mean the traffic suggestions?"

Harrowing though they may be, scooters are the only way to get around in Taiwan. You can go three blocks before the car you weaved in front of hundreds of yards back even makes it past the intersection in the perpetual gridlock. Turning left is entertaining, as dozens of scooters fill the middle of the intersection, lined up in neat rows and columns. That takes too long, though, so try the savvy scooter's trick. Say you're headed south and you want to turn left to go east at a four-way intersection with four lanes going in each direction. The thing to do is turn right (west), quickly do a U-turn in the middle of traffic, and end up facing east. You get a green light before the poor saps in the southbound lane get a left-turn arrow, and you zoom by laughing.

Did I mention there are precious few sidewalks in Taiwan? Here's another reason it's handy to be on a scooter -- pedestrians can't run over your toes, but you can run over theirs when you zoom by them with inches to spare. It's all one street, and fair game for use by cars, trucks, scooters, sandwich stands, vegetable stands, pedestrians and the more than occasional stray dog. There is no "personal bubble" with this many people around.