How Taiwan is Like Italy

Italy Tries to End 2-Wheel Anarchy: Scooter License Now Required for Youths By Daniel Williams. Even though it's about Italy, it could be talking about Taiwan, even up to and including a July 1 deadline for new traffic policies.

The buzzing, weaving hordes of young motor scooter drivers is one of Italy's most common and horrifying street scenes. Now the government is at least trying to license the chaos...

Teach kids the rules, goes the logic of the campaign against two-wheeled anarchy, and they will stop meandering the wrong way down one-way streets, making left turns from right-hand lanes and parking wherever it's convenient...

At stake [are] the dreams of preteen boys and girls to do what older siblings had done, speed off to the beach or mountains with pals hanging on precariously.

For mid-teens, motor scooters are not just a means of transportation, but freedom machines, no less than cars are for American teens...

The scooters [mean] freedom for parents, too, who were relieved of having to cart their children to soccer practice and ice cream parlors. All kinds are driven here -- fancy Arilias and Vespas and rickety mopeds, barely more than bicycles...

Licensing the young scooter drivers is part of a long-running Italian campaign to get its traffic rules in line with European Union standards and bring a measure of order to its clogged streets and highways.

Just over a year ago, Italy required motorbike riders of all ages to wear helmets. In most of the country, they complied, if slowly. In Naples, however, boys and girls continue to eschew the helmets. After a boy was killed in an accident, his friends said he refused to cover his head because it would mess up his gel hairdo.

In view of the mixed success of past moves to get tough, some people here remain skeptical that scooter licenses will do much to curb such practices as passing on the right or driving into incoming traffic.