This is without a doubt the strangest and wildest incident that I’ve ever seen involving airport transportation, as reported by Focus Taiwan and flagged by LoyaltyLobby.
Police & ride share driver get into wild showdown
The problem of unlicensed ride share and taxi drivers at airports is pretty common, whereby someone in the terminal will offer you a ride. Often there are announcements in airports about not taking rides with these people.
That brings us to an incident that happened around 9AM on Saturday, September 20, 2025, in the passenger pick-up area of Terminal 1 at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), in Taiwan. Agents of the Aviation Police Bureau’s Security Inspection Brigade noticed a rented white Tesla trying to solicit a passenger.
The officers approached the driver, who was later identified as a 43-year-old repeat offender. After being stopped, he refused to cooperate, and tried to quickly maneuver away from the police, before the driver could even close the door of the passenger side of the car.
The passenger was thrown out of the car and appeared to even be run over by it, as the driver tried to avoid the police. The passenger was fortunately pulled to safety thanks to the help of some onlookers. During the maneuvering, the Tesla driver almost hit the police officer on multiple occasions, and then pulled away in the opposite direction.
At that point, the police officer fired warning shots into the air, and then targeted the back wheels of the car, to prevent the driver from fleeing. After eight shots were fired, the officers dragged the driver out of the car, before arresting him for endangering public safety.
Fortunately no one was seriously injured, though the passenger was taken to a local hospital. This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. In June 2025, a driver tried to flee from airport police while under the suspicion of trying to pick up passengers illegally.
Below you can see a video of the incident…
I’ve never seen anything like this before
At airports in the United States, we often hear announcements about avoiding getting into cars with anyone who approaches you in a terminal, and with non-licensed drivers. However, enforcement seems virtually non-existent.
All the time you’ll see people wandering around terminals pretty obviously trying to offer others rides. There are police officers in the terminal, and they don’t do anything about it. So obviously the enforcement in Taiwan is the other extreme, where officials are actively looking for people violating the rules.
On the surface, firing shots over what’s ostensibly an unlicensed airport pick-up seems like a bit of an overkill. However, this very quickly went from a simple dispute over airport pick-up rules, to one about evading the police.
Did the driver really think the best outcome here would be to try and drive away, and that this would allow him to make a getaway without any consequences? Presumably he did think that, though I can’t make sense of his logic.
I’d be fascinated to know what the punishment is for picking up a passenger without a license, vs. endangering public safety, which it seems he was charged with (and that says nothing of the damage his car sustained).
Bottom line
Police at Taipei Taoyuan Airport spotted an unlicensed ride share driver trying to pick up a passenger, and took action to stop him. However, the driver tried to make a getaway, with several aggressive maneuvers that even caused the passenger to be partially run over by the car.
With the driver refusing to stop, police ultimately fired shots, including into the wheels of the Tesla, to get it to stop. I don’t think the driver made a very good risk assessment here… oy.
What do you make of this Taipei Airport ride share mess?
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