jamesbrock

I am not sure I understand the "negotiated settlement," part. Do you mean the shop had to pay because it had created a "water hazard," or that you paid because.....of something?

I doubt very much the shop would have had to pay.... More likely James had to pay both the truck driver and also the driver of the bike that hit the truck from behind...

Correct. Although, as I said, I did not see any other vehicle on or near the road in the minute after the accident, and I pretty much remember everything after the accident - it's just the three seconds or so before the accident that I'm not clear on. As far as I'm concerned, the second motorbike's involvement was only opportunistic. Perhaps some pictures would prove me wrong, but...

Nevertheless, as you wrote, (and I agree) I got away lightly. I'm not complaining about the 20,000 I had to pay - as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy that part is over.

I would like to see pictures though, so as to clear up in my mind what way we landed, and how we actually got off the bike... The strange part is - I recall all my thoughts - and there were a lot of them as time seemed to slow down - but I don't recall what actually happened between hitting the road, seeing the pick-up bearing down upon us, and the impact, all of which took place within seconds.

I think at the end of the day you got away lightly.

1.) You're still alive

2.) You're girlfriend is still alive

3.) You're not a vegetable from head trauma

4.) You're girlfriend is not a vegetable from head trauma

5.) The Thai's didn't come after you for more money and harass you with guns/knives, threats, etc.

I hate driving on this island, I really do. I drive both bike and a pickup. I hate driving the pickup more as you have to be so alert to everything going on. Idiots everywhere. Still that's life on the island, you have to take the rough with the smooth.

I hate these idiots driving around, I feel bad for you, but

Oh I agree with you wholeheartedly! In fact, I've said so twice so far. If my posts give the impression that I'm seeking sympathy, that I apologise because I'm not.

I am not sure I understand the "negotiated settlement," part. Do you mean the shop had to pay because it had created a "water hazard," or that you paid because.....of something?

I use 'negotiated settlement' sarcastically. Basically it was extortion at its purest level.

I don't think the shop was involved at all, although here were an awful lot of people in police station, so it would not surprise me if they were 'traumatised' somehow.

I also occasionally watch YouTube videos on my Samsung. I haven't really bothered to surf the web or use any other apps, as almost everything can be done easier on any of my other devices. My TV has the Wi-Fi adaptor built in.

80km/h at that corner? No chance. Also, if he had hit you at 80km/h I doubt you would be here now to tell the tale.

I should have said hit the bike. We somehow got off in the nick of time, although one of my feel was still under the bike when he hit it...

I didn't think so, but I haven't driven on Samui, so wouldn't know the maximum I'm-a-complete-wanke_r-approach speed.

Edit: I just realised that, as I specifically asked Trapper, my comment could be misconstrued to imply that I think he's a wanke_r - I do not; I just asked him as he saw the scene and knows where approximately where the impact occurred, which was closer the bridge than the corner itself.

At all times while on the racetrack-with-villages, yes; heading 700m to the market, to be honest, probably not.

~

Interestingly, a Thai friend came to visit yesterday, who hadn't heard of the accident. We showed him the pictures of the bike, and he immediately recognised the pick-up. He then went on to tell us that the driver had bragged how he hit a farang and got 7000 baht for it, even though his pick up only received cosmetic damage. He also said he was doing 80 km/h when he hit us - although I knew he was speeding, I find 80 unbelievable considering how close he was to the corner. Trapper, do you reckon he could approach that corner doing 80 where he was, considering the road was clear in front of him?

Our friend was quite angry once he realised this. I was only surprised at how small his share of the negotiated settlement was... I forgot to ask him if the second bike was actually involved at all, or if it was an opportunistic involvement - I can not recall seeing it between us and the pick-up as I was bum-walking towards the side of the road.

Edit: readability. Typing with one hand.

I knew they were the best money could buy.

Love it! That should be their next slogan: Royal Thai Police - The Best Money Can Buy

I wonder how many posters on here have added to it through bribing police with cash in order to not be given a driving tickets....

Be honest please.

I see it more as extortion. Pay this amount now, or we'll make it so difficult for you that you wish you had.

was "encouraged" to give a donation once. I have no idea what ticket I would have been given had I not complied, but I'm sure he would have made something up.

I had an horrendous motorcycle accident just last Sunday; after Nathon hospital severely maltreated me, pushing me out onto the street unable to walk due to (what I was sure was) a broken leg and sprained ankles, I had to go to the police station in Lamai - so they could assist with the negotiated settlement. It turned out that the guy who hit me was waiting there the whole time (as well as his brother, uncle, aunt, cousins, a few chickens, his boss, the owner of a second motorbike that was allegedly 'involved', and anyone else who wanted to see the farang get extorted). It then dawned on me why the Nathon hospital was in such a hurry to get me out! I thought it was through sheer incompetence, but now I suspect other inducements.

The big copper says to me, 'You wrong, you pay 20,000 baht, it finished now. You not pay, you go to Bophut, you go to court - take long time.' As I was in immense pain, and wanted to get to a decent hospital STAT, I paid - despite my belief (since proven) that I wasn't completely in the wrong, despite the damage to SUV the hit our bike was negligible, and despite the mysteriousness of the second bike's involvement.

Boring postscript: I then went to Bangkok International Hospital in Chaweng, and the care there was amazing! Turns out I had broken my left big toe, my right leg (fibula), and my left elbow, as well as many other injuries not treated in Nathon...

It's quite sad that the Police of a country has such a well deserved reputation that their sole purpose is to extort money from people; after all, no one in the country actually wants to deal with them so stays well clear even if they have had a crime committed against them. So they have no real job to do now apart from making money through corruption for the godfathers. The problem is though is anyone ever bothered to clean them all out, they would take off their uniforms but carry on regardless.

Too true.

Edit: readability

Go to court. Just like anywhere else, if you think a ticket is bogus, you take it to court.

Unlike everywhere else, the courts are going to believe the testimony of a Thai police officer over that of a farang, especially once Nevermind.

Is it Friday already?

I saw the aftermath of that accident, I was sure I saw two motorcycles damaged though, defintely saw yours under the pick-up.

I will pop down to the French bakery and see if anyone there got pics of the accident then see if I can get hold of them for you JamesB.

Good to hear you are ok despite the badly damaged body.

Thanks for that, that would be much appreciated.

A friend arrived on the scene after our bike was pulled out from the pick-up, and took two picture; it's a pretty messy sight.

Yes, I was introduced to the involvement of the second motorcycle while at the police station for the assisted negotiation - it appears they were following pick-up and rear-ended it after it hit our bike (or we hit it, whichever way you want to look at it); while there were no injuries, thankfully, I still paid for some damage to their bike.

So Boy mentioned there are 3 tires available that fit our wheels but keep in mind no one makes the stock front tire size.

The stock rear size is 80/90-16 and he had a Dunlop TT900 available for 750BHT.

I decided to put this tire on the front rim only.

Since the front and rear wheels seem to have the same rim width it is safe to run this tire on both wheels for the cheapest option.

I then opted to get an even bigger rear tire, but Dunlop doesn't make one.

So I got an IRC model SS-530F size 100/80-16 for 1200BHT.

You can see how much bigger this tire is in the picture.

Boy mentioned that Bridgestone makes a Battlax tire for this bike but it is around 2000BHT for one tire.

I used to have Bridgestone Battlax BT016 tires on my MV Agusta and they were great tires but this is a freakin scooter so I went the cheaper route.

The rubber compound on the Dunlop and IRC (Japanese brand) was noticeably tacky like the BT016s I had.

It took 30 minutes to have my tires swapped and they didn't charge me for install.

They weren't balanced but neither were the stock tires.

If you have an old bike, you should get the valvestems replaced too, but I skipped this since my bike only has 1500KM on the odo.

As the pic shows the tires have a similar diameter on the bike.

You can see how much the front fender gap has been filled by the new Dunlop.

Sadly the IRC doesn't have the cool colored letters the Dunlop does.

So for 1950BHT I have some real (sportbike quality) tires that have great grip.

With the much softer compounds and bigger contact patches, I'm confident I reduced my chances of wiping out significantly.

A pretty cheap investment in safety if you ask me.

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I'm looking for some larger tyres myself - with these exact dimensions. Just wondering how you're going with these after two years, and if you'd recommend this combination?

Yeah, I spent quite a bit of time in the Lamai police while I was between hospitals, as they were 'assisting' with the 'negotiated settlement'.

I admire your honesty in admitting that you made a mistake. Not many would do that.

I hope you make a complete recovery from you injuries.

Agree, get well soon.

Thanks Rooo.

I admire your honesty in admitting that you made a mistake. Not many would do that.

I hope you make a complete recovery from you injuries.

Thank you. I've had 72 hours in a wheelchair to reflect on exactly what went wrong in those fateful few seconds, and on how exceedingly fortunate we both are to still be alive.

Which reminds me, insertmembernamehere, I didn't answer your last question: no, neither of us were wearing helmets.

Yeah, I spent quite a bit of time in the Lamai police while I was between hospitals, as they were 'assisting' with the 'negotiated settlement'.

That's not just on the section of road mentioned, but on quite a number of Soi's....around the island..

Not my soi...naturally ... :/

Yes, it appears that something is being done, but let's wait and see how it all comes together. They put in drains near Lamai, and the grate situation is legendary (not to mention putting the drains on the high camber side of the road where most of the water does not run...).

But as you point out, it is a step in the right direction.

Let's also not mention that the parallel bars of every odd grate is oriented parallel to the road, as opposed to perpendicular to the road, which really can be scary for us cyclists!

I failed to notice the inherent danger of a 'wet patch' on the road, therefore failed to ride accordingly.

Said wet patches - where Samuians water the road in an attempt, I presume, to prevent road dust from entering their place of business - are rarely a problem, unless one is accelerating (from standstill) whilst simultaneously changing direction and lacks sufficient riding skills to correct the loss of traction of one's rear tyre.

Make sure you install the "Find my iPhone" app on the new phone.

You mean, make sure you enable "Find my iPhone" in settings. There's no use having the app on the phone you're trying to find!

Hopefully no serious damage to either of you.

Take care out there.

Thanks, no serious damage; I broke a few bones and sprained some joints, my gf got some bad bruising, but we're both feeling fortunate despite that. Bones heal and bruises fade.I'd like to see some pics, as I'm not exactly sure which way we landed.

Now with less and less reason to jailbreak - unlocked phones sold in all countries in the world - this is probably slowly going to go away.

I would've thought the same, but here's a quick breakdown of how many A5 owners jailbroke their devices in the first three days after the release of the untethered corona jailbreak for A5 devices:

491,325 new iPhone4,1 devices

308,967 new iPad2 devices

152,940 previously jailbroken (at 4.x) iPad2 devices

Total: 953,232 new A5 jailbreaks in a little over 3 days, and this was when there was still no software based carrier unlock available!

The reason these numbers can be so precise is that one of the housekeeping activities that happens when you launch Cydia is a query to @saurik’s server for the list of available SHSH blobs. (Even if you have none on file, the query is still made).

Doesn't look like it's going away!

Gf & I came off our motorbike yesterday - my fault - and there were a large number of people taking pictures, of both us, and the motorbike wedged under the front of an SUV, as we were waiting for the ambulance. Just wondering if anyone here on TV took any pictures? I'd love to get a few if anyone did. PM me if you did and I'll give you my email address. Thanks.

It looks like they've updated the Thai-language page(s) but not the English ones yet.

http://www.truemove-...ay-topping.aspx

Ah, didn't think to look there.

FWIW, it looks like the 349 baht plan (1 GB/10 hrs of WiFi) only changed to 350 baht (375 with VAT).

Correct. That's the one I applied. That will teach me for relying on my memory...

They must have just done that. I specifically checked and asked the rep to check while on the phone thai and english versions, and all she could say was "sorry, we change the price, your pamphlet is expired".

I've tried the iService via trueiservice.com, but it will not load any details as each page i tried to load said that no information available for prepaid numbers. So I take it iService is for postpaid accounts, but my signup slipped through the cracks?

PS: Move to Mobile devices sub-forum?

Unless they're still tweaking their plans and/or website, and it's simply not reflecting on the iService app during the changes. Like I said, the plans weren't there one day, but were there a few days later (albeit, with new pricing).

But then again, I was supposed to have my package at 759 baht, it is now 799 baht no updates on website or pamphlet. So some things appear to be changing rapidly without prior notice. this way you could use USSD with an aircard over your desktop?

Yes, I noticed that last week. I tried to apply my usual 349B package on Monday using the iService app, but it wasn't available as an option. I tried again a few days later and they had all new packages available - as you said, no new information on their website. I applied the 399B package as it was similar to the 349B package (I can't remember the exact details, and the new packages aren't displaying on the iService app this morning).

I wouldn't post this in the Apple forum but will post the question here.

Why would anyone buy a phone that doesn't work as they want it to work right out of the box. Unlock, jailbreak, what a bunch of hooey.

$5,000 worth of add on applications that will be lost by updating the operating system??????? How smart is that?

Some people like to tinker and tweak, others like to install illegally obtained software. In fact, it is estimated that up to 40% of iPhones are jailbroken. This is not just an iPhone phenomenon, I know plenty of Android phone users whip tinker and tweak just as much! Then there are others who can and do use it straight out of the box.

And, for the record, the $5000 quoted figure was the value of the apps, not what he paid to illegally obtain them. Oh, and there is a jailbroken app that backs up your jailbroken apps so you can put them back on after a OS upgrade - so, again, you don't lose everything...

So if my post was of no interest to you then why did you even bother replying?

To be helpful to the people that were most definitely mislead by any of your many inaccuracies.

I'm sure that many people who ARE jailbroken and were wondering the same thing are thankful to my post the same I was when I Googled it first. Why would you assume that everyone already knows everything the same way you think you do?

If posts are not useful to you just move on to the next post instead of replying with typicaly sarcastic answers looking for a fight. Better to say nothing at all then to say something bad right? Unless you are a troll.

Not looking for a fight at all, although I do acknowledge that pointing out someone's mistakes usually leads to one. Again, I was simply pointing out that you made certain errors in your postings in order for people to not be unnecessarily alarmed or inconvenienced.

I lost count somewhere in your second post of how many times one can be wrong!

Technical inaccuracies aside; firstly, you assume that everyone jailbreaks their phones, so omit a lot of qualifying information in your topic title. Then you assume that everyone who jailbreaks their phones does it to install illegally obtained apps. You go on to claim, that those who don't jailbreak their phones and instal illegally obtained apps can only make phone calls... Do you realise how ignorant this makes you sound?

Berek: Yes it has however have you ever seen iTunes update your idevice and then you lose your cydia, installOus along with all your apps and tweaks before? This JUST came out fyi as only yesterday for the first time in my life of owning idevices did my "settings" show an update and asked me to update to 5.1

Updating any version of iOS with any version of iTunes has always removed the jailbreak, Cydia, all your tweaks, and all your jailbroken apps. Nothing has changed here.

The reason this is the first time in your life of owning iDevices that your "settings" showed an update and asked you to update to 5.1, is that OTA (Over the Air) iOS updates were only introduced in iOS 5.

Anyways I hope we don't see you guys on this forum posting for help with anything in the future because guess what, people don't like to help sarcastic folks.

My post was to warn people because I was just lucky that I Googled the update before downloading it. If you don't have anything positive to post then why even bother posting?

Actually, most of the posts you refer to were more helpful that yours. You need to remember that not everyone jailbreaks their phones, so starting a thread with a title such as this one - without specifying that it only pertains to a jailbroken device - can do more harm that good, even if it is done with the best intentions. Upon upgrading your device, you will NOT "lose everything" - you will lose your jailbreak (and associated tweaks and apps); nothing more, nothing less.

Basically, the situation with jailbroken devices is the same as it has always been: do not upgrade you iOS until an untethered jailbreak is released, especially if you're relying on a software unlock; but ALL jail breakers should know this.

BTW, you can still update your apps on a non-jailbroken 4S running 5.0.1 without using iTunes; you are not forced to update to iOS 5.1.

what the hell were you doing there for five hours?

At Royal Flora? I think I spent 8 hours there - a couple of times. Great show.

Yep, I meant Royal Flora. A stiflingly hot, very hazy day, but in the end it was the incessant jingle that got the better of me. Once I realised it was on a loop around lunchtime, the day just got worse and worse!