In Taiwan, mom’s don’t drive minivans, they drive scooters. 22 million people, over 11 million scooters. They’re cheaper and more convenient than cars and the MRT (subway). They form endless lines on virtually every sidewalk in the city and often come with fantastic slogans splashed across the front. There’re a couple great slogans we’ve seen a few times but haven’t photo’d yet – we’ll add those to the gallery when we get them. The rules of the road are different here: traffic flows around obstacles like water. Scooters are ideal for this, and it is normal scooters to ride past the cars to the front of the line when traffic is stopped, forming a “scooter army” at the red light that takes off in a cloud of smoke when the light turns green (the older scooters use two-stroke engines). Some sidewalks are lined with barriers to keep the scooter drivers from using them to detour around traffic; it’s hard to walk in sidewalks without barriers because they are full of parked scooters. These pictures show kids on their way to school, the after school pick-up, which involves mom’s on scooters piling into an side-street intersection before whisking them away, a couple of scooter armies, some slogans, and the ever-present endless parking lines.

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