The collision occurred at approximately 16:00 on 15 November 1991. The Chu-Kuang 1, a slower express service, was in the process of turning onto a secondary line when the Tze-Chiang 1006 — a faster EMU100 series express — lost control and struck it. Three carriages of the Chu-Kuang train were heavily crushed by the impact. The passengers inside them had no warning. Taiwan Railway dispatched cranes to lift the wrecked bogies, and investigators arrived to examine the signal systems, track switches, and mechanical condition of the rolling stock. Four of the rail cars — two from each train — were so severely damaged they were subsequently scrapped.

Thirty people did not survive. One hundred and twelve others were taken from the wreckage with injuries. The source records do not list the victims by name, but the afternoon timing and the routes involved — connecting western Taiwan's cities with Miaoli and points north — suggest they were ordinary travelers: office workers, shoppers, people with somewhere to be. Each was a person with a life extending well beyond that afternoon in Miaoli. The scale of what happened — thirty families receiving news that evening, a hundred and twelve more facing recovery — is worth holding in mind before moving to the question of who was responsible.

Taiwan Railway's investigation examined signal equipment, track conversion systems, and the possibility of human error. The railroad chief at the time, Chen Shifang, who had taken office only four months earlier, publicly stated early on that the signal systems were not at fault and attributed the collision entirely to the train not slowing down. Both Chen Shifang and Tze-Chiang driver Su Jinkun (蘇金焜) were prosecuted for professional negligence. The investigation reconstructed the sequence of events through simulation, confirming how the Tze-Chiang had struck and overridden the Chu-Kuang's cars. Chen Shifang was ultimately found not guilty; Su Jinkun was sentenced to four years in prison.

For nearly thirty years, the 1991 Miaoli collision stood as Taiwan's worst railway disaster since the postwar era. That changed in April 2021, when 49 people died after a train derailed in Hualien — a tragedy that brought the 1991 disaster back into public memory as a point of comparison. Between the two accidents, advocates and journalists continued to document the broader pattern of Taiwan Railway incidents, tracking hundreds of accidents over the intervening decades. The 1991 collision became a reference point in those discussions: a reminder of what inadequate safeguards and unclear accountability could cost.

Zaoqiao Station still stands in Miaoli County, a stop on the main western line of the Taiwan Railway. Trains pass through it every day, carrying the same kinds of travelers as in 1991. There is no permanent memorial at the site to the thirty people who died there. The collision is remembered primarily in archives, in the records of subsequent inquiries, and in the occasional article that surfaces when a new disaster prompts the question of whether Taiwan's railways have learned enough. The answer, advocates have argued, is complicated — and the people who were on those trains in November 1991 deserve more than a complicated answer.