Traffic laws do not seem to be hard and steadfast, just mere recommendations. Miraculously however, everyone seems to have an innate sense of what the other vehicles, scooters, and pedestrians are going to do. Actually, scratch the pedestrian part. If you’re a pedestrian, you’d better wear a helmet and a protective foam suit. Since the sidewalks are places to park scooters and not for pedestrians, you have to take your life into your own hands and walk on the street. Automobiles will go out of their way to avoid collisions with other cars and scooters, but if you’re a biped, watch out.

Besides traffic laws, the other elements of personal safety that I find oddly adhered to is the use of seatbelts. It is a Taiwanese law that all passengers sitting in the front seat of a car must wear a seatbelt. It is not however, a law for people in the backseat to wear a seatbelt. I discovered this nuance last weekend while taking a cab ride in Kaohsiung. Suzanne, a guy named Hugh, who is staying at the same hotel as us, and I decided to go sightseeing for the day. When we got into a cab outside of the Kaohsiung train station, the cab driver wouldn’t go until Hugh, who was sitting in the front seat, put on his seatbelt. The cab driver spoke very little English, so it took us a minute to figure out what he was saying. When we realized he was telling Hugh to put on his seatbelt, Suzanne and I who were sitting in the back seat, started putting on our seatbelts. When the cab driver saw that Suzanne and I had fastened our seatbelts, he frantically told us to unfasten them. He was very persistent. As he later tried to explain, it is Taiwan law to fasten your seatbelt in the front seat only.

Besides cars, I have discovered that being told to fasten your seatbelt is only a recommendation on airplanes as well. This week I flew from Taipei to Nagoya, Japan. The flight was unremarkable except that we had to fly around a typhoon that was moving through the waters towards China. This “weather disturbance” as it was referred to, caused our flight to be rather bumpy. I guess turbulence is the correct technical term, but it felt more like an amusement park ride. Actually it felt a lot like when you put a quarter in that little machine next to the bed in one of those “less sophisticated” motels. Only this flight wasn’t nearly as smooth.

Anyway, several years ago I saw a news clip of the inside of an airplane on a trip from Japan to Hawaii. The images were so startling, that I have never forgotten them. The video started with what seemed like a fairly normal scene, people were standing in the aisles and the flight attendants were passing out beverages. Suddenly, the plane hit a patch of turbulence that shook the plane so bad that several people were knocked off balance and flew into the air, actually smashing into the ceiling. I was shocked. I think about 13 people were injured with the worst casualty being a sprained neck. I always wondered why the pilots never knew there was a patch of turbulence coming up and why they didn’t tell the passengers to sit down.

After my flight to Nagoya, I finally have this question answered. The pilots most likely DID know that there was a patch of turbulence coming up and the pilots most likely DID tell the passengers to sit down and fasten their seat belts. The problem was, the passengers took this warning as a suggestion and decided not to listen.

The reason why I have come to this conclusion is this, nobody on my flight to Nagoya listened to any of the pilot warnings except me. Now I am a fairly experienced flyer and I do not get that rattled over turbulence. But, on this flight, the turbulence was so significant that when the fasten seat belt sign went on, I sat down, fastened my seatbelt, and began pondering the meaning of my life. Oddly, when other people heard the fasten seat belt announcement from the pilot, it seemed like it was a cue from the pilot to get up and go to the bathroom. I have never seen such a disregard for an authoritarian plea of caution than I saw on this flight. The more the pilot asked people to sit down and fasten their seat belt the more people got up to go to the bathroom.

Normally I wouldn’t care that much what people do with themselves, but there was a lot of turbulence. And since my seat was in the back of the plane near the toilet, I was afraid that people were going to start flying in the air and land in my lap. As the turbulence got worse and the plane started to really shake, the people next to me just stood there apparently unphased. I was scared. When the plane started “jumping,” I thought for sure bodies would by flying around like confetti at Times Square on New Years Eve.

Still, no one went back to their seats and none of the flight attendants got out of their seat to make them sit down. At one point during a particularly bumpy stretch, the people next to me did react, they started grabbing onto whatever was nearest to them. One lady grabbed my seat and almost sat in my lap, while a guy two rows up from me actually laid down in the aisle. I wanted to tell the lady almost sitting in my lap to go to her own seat and fasten her seatbelt, but I didn’t t know how to communicate to her. Instead, I just stared at her with a look of horror. She looked back at me and just smiled. I didn’t know what to do, so I just smiled back. When I smiled back, she started laughing, so I started laughing. Soon the two rows around me were all smiling and laughing.

What the hell were these people thinking!?!?!? I wanted to put on my bike helmet, a padded suit, and a parachute, but all these people wanted to do was laugh, of course the lady standing next to me that looked like she was going to sit in my lap at any moment. But still nobody sat down in their seats. It wasn’t until the plane was minutes from landing that everyone in the cabin sat down. The whole time, I didn’t move except to get a tighter grip on my arm rest.