Earlier this week and LDS missionary, David Smith Hampton, was killed while riding his bike within the space Taichung City has allocated for bicycle traffic. The 18yo. Utah man who had been in Taichung for approximately four months, was struck and later died of his injuries.
Regardless of what you think of LDS or to missionary project in general, it was another senseless death on the roads of Taiwan's central metropolis-- a metropole that sits at the doorstep of the bicycle industry, yet has no discernible space for safe cycling on the roadways.
The government does not keep statistics on bicycle deaths, so we can only guess how often this is replicated each year. Sad, but a fact of life and death for cyclists in Taichung.
