paulbj2

Sweden has the lowest rate of road accident deaths in the world, most years, despite experiencing extreme weather conditions during the winter months over much of the country. This may be because they have very strict drink drive laws with extremely severe penalties for infringements together with a very low blood alcohol limit of 0.02% (one beer puts most people over that limit) compared to the UK and most states in the US where it is 0.08% or continental Europe where the limit is mostly 0.05% (so 1 beer, maybe absolute limit 2 beers). In Japan the limit is effectively zero alcohol at the wheel.

The Swedish figure is 2.8 road deaths/100,000 inhabitants,

for the UK: 2.9/100,000

for Australia: 5.4/100,000

for the USA: 10.6/100,000

for South East Asia: 17.0/100,000

for the World: 17.4/100,000

for Africa: 26.6/100,000

for Thailand: 36.2/100,000

The worst country in western Europe is Lithuania at 10.6/100,000

however the European average is at 9.3/100,000.

Nevertheless, you could sum it up as: if you want to stay alive, confine your driving to Europe and in particular to Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and Spain. If you have lost interest in life, then drive in Africa or better yet, come to Thailand!

These are WHO figures. If this absolute carnage were to be caused by terrorism, by airline crashes or by any other common means, the whole world would be up in arms but because it happens on the world's roads we  pretty much ignore it! 

I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that in Thailand, you actually have to be dead on the road when the Ambulance comes to shovel you up, to count as a road accident death. If you get into the Ambulance alive, you don't count. If that is really the case, the "real" death rate is way, way higher than the official figures suggest as, for example, head injury victims often survive a few hours or days before expiring. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

For comparison, the death rate on UK roads for a population of 64,100,000 (as of 2013) is around 1,700/annum or an average of 4.66/day. In 2014 it rose to 1775/annum or 4.86/day; 2014 was not a good vintage for road accidents it seems!

The UK has a pretty low rate of road deaths by international standards perhaps because the laws against drink driving are rigidly enforced and the penalties for getting caught are quite severe.

7 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

If i was the General I would put  ban on guns….anyone caught with one, 6 years jail plus 2 mill baht fine.

 

No exceptions.

Absolutely NO exceptions (except Hi-So folk who are completely exempt from all laws, naturally)

Several hundred people are killed by people firing indiscriminately into the air in places like Pakistan, India and the middle east. These stupid morons seem to forget that the bullet has to fall to ground somewhere. For example, a round from an AK47 attains significant altitude before it starts to fall back to earth and as it is a pointy, dense metal object, it attains considerable velocity in freefall; enough to kill or injure anyone it hits. As the trajectory looks to be low in this case, it may be more or less dangerous; it's difficult to tell without knowing what was outside the window but firing guns at anything that you are not trying to hit is crass stupidity!

They used to use these large Catamarans on the Ostende - Dover run and cancellations were fairly frequent on that run too. They are great in anything up to about a Force 7 in the English Channel after that, they get pretty damned uncomfortable; they are however very fast compared to a conventional car ferry. I suspect they can run in significantly worse conditions but they would need to throttle back substantially and I'd guess the passenger experience would be pretty horrific.

My doctor managed to get the message across by showing me a risk chart for cardiovascular accidents (heart attacks and strokes). I was in the form of a printed spreadsheet she pointed out that as I smoked 1 to 2 packs of cigarettes a day, drank too much, was overweight, did a sedentary job, didn't exercise and was borderline diabetic my risk of dying of a cardiovascular accident in the next 10 years was about 1 in 5 (I can't remember the exact figure but I can remember that is was VERY scary). I replied that I wasn't that attached to life as I was coming up to retirement and wasn't going to have much to live on, so life was probably going to be pretty miserable, so basically, "bring it on". She said "ah yes, that's all very well, but most people who have a cardiovascular accident don't die of it, they end up crippled for the rest of their lives with partial paralysis or a slowly failing heart but still hang on for a few years of abject misery and pain. Does that appeal to you?" Then she said "If you just stop smoking, that will just about halve your risk, do you reckon you can do it?"

The idea of ending up semi-gaga in a wheelchair for the rest of my life didn't appeal so I stopped smoking (really damned hard!), lost weight and, when I retired, moved to Thailand where I walk most everywhere instead of driving and where my meagre European pension is close to a King's ransom. My weight is still a bit of an issue but not as bad as it was for that visit to the doctor when my BMI was over 30 = clinically obese! However that's down to BMI = 27.6 now; still over weight but better; I am on a diet and I am losing weight pretty fast with a little help from diabetes medication that controls your blood sugar, helps you lose weight and substantially reduces your risk of cardiovascular accidents.

I feel a hell of a lot better and the more weight I lose, the better I feel. Like giving up smoking; dieting and taking exercise is not that difficult unless you are terminally self indulgent. 

My weight is down by 5 Kg (11 pounds) since the beginning of November, only another 13.5 Kg to go to reach my target weight 70 Kg (11 Stone = 154 lbs) which will give me BMI = 23.4.

28 minutes ago, evadgib said:

This reminds me of a stunt pulled by an insurance company some years ago....

 

Insurer: "Our BMI chart says your xx KGs overweight, That'll be £ (twice as much!) please!"

 

Me: "Whaaattt? I neither drink nor smoke! How many of you 'normal' customers can match that?"

 

A kidney prob went undetected for 30 years and lead to unexplained weight gain but is thankfully now being reversed. Cardio vascular wise I'm fine, not least through regular excersise, but I'll always be a tellytubby although did manage to keep it down prior to the age of 40 as I was a soldier and always on the move.

 

Perhaps the OP could answer my question to insurers and also reveal his age? :)

I don't think it would be in any way unfair to reply that for every one person like yourself with a valid medical reason for being overweight, there are probably several hundred or even several thousand who simply eat more calories a day than their body requires and who thus gain weight. The heavier you get the more calories you burn so eventually most people reach an overweight equilibrium state. However there are, of course, those whose weight doesn't settle and who continue  pile on the Kilos; these unfortunate people are the ones who make onto the television and into the newspapers when the fire brigade have to extricate them from their dwellings as no Ambulance crew could safely lift them.

As being significantly overweight is known to be one of the primary causes of Type II Diabetes, it is a very serious problem for health providers across the world. I don't think people realise just how serious this illness can be. Amongst others, the "side effects" of Type II Diabetes can be Cataracts and Diabetic Retinopathy which can lead to blindness. Peripheral Vascular Disease is another unpleasant "side effect". That can lead to limbs needing to be amputated, grave chronic ulceration of the extremities particularly legs and feet which can also eventually lead to amputation. It also substantially enhances a sufferer's risk of cardio-vascular accidents (heart attacks and strokes). 

21 hours ago, robblok said:

My dad was like that, he lost a lot of it (not all) But he told me it felt so much better not carrying all that weight. When I got fat (not that fat) i felt bad did not want on pictures and so on. I really felt like a fat pig (and it was not even that bad).  I guess it really got a lot to do with self image. 

 

I don't doubt that the real heavy ones have health problems too, can't be good for the joints and so on. But its often a matter of priorities and they made their choice i respect that. I could be fat and eating whatever and whenever I want with no regard for the future or lean and taking care of my diet and exercising. Just choices people make. 

 

 

My Dad also and he died of it.

The biggest single health issue caused by overweight is significantly life shortening, Type II Diabetes whose onset is very, very frequently linked to a high Body Mass Index coupled with a sedentary lifestyle. 

There is one other possibility no one has mentioned and that is to justify your financial status partly with monthly pension income and partly with capital in the bank. If you use this means, you calculate it as follows: subtract your annual pension income in Baht from 800,000 and the sum remaining is the amount you you need on deposit in the bank. The same rules regarding "maturing" your bank deposit apply in this case also.

19 hours ago, canthai55 said:

 

Wow - Europe still uses these ?  Are the trucks still steam powered ?  North American now uses these - https://eldfacts.com/eld-mandate/

 I have no idea whether vehicles in Europe are still fitted with the automatic recording devices that relied on a card being inserted into the machine or whether they have been superseded by fully electronic ones but the principle remains the same. It's simply a device that records the hours that a vehicle has been rolling, the speeds it has attained and more recently, probably, the exact route it has followed.

51 minutes ago, dcsw53 said:

I heard that in some countries they use things called tachographs ( not sure of the spelling ).

 

Apparently these are inexpensive pieces of kit designed to stop drivers of commercial vehicles from being <deleted> driving too fast or too long. It would be shame if they were introduced here, the number of daily news stories like this would plummet.

Tachographs are fitted to most commercial vehicles in the Europe, moreover in some countries, a driver can be prosecuted for speeding just based on the  Tacho record as it records speed accurately. Of course people do dream up ways to fiddle them but overall, yes, they do keep drivers from attempting to drive ridiculous hours.

12 minutes ago, chilli42 said:

A simple regulation requiring, at minimum a trigger lock on guns, and better a trigger lock and a locked safe.  

 

Works in other countries provided its followed.

It works even better never to keep them loaded and to keep the ammunition in a safe.

45 minutes ago, lvr181 said:

Sounds like "gun lobby" U.S.A. thinking to me. 

Absolutely agree!

39 minutes ago, cromagnon said:

Of course, leftists will make this into a gun control issue as they do with every gun tragedy.  Simply put, the parents are fully responsible for what happened.  Perhaps the worst part of this is not even the death, but the fact that the 6-year old kid will have to live with the knowledge that she shot her sister to death....for the rest of her life.  But at the end of the day, we should not be taking away the rights of the majority to defend themselves with a gun for the relatively minute number of instances where guns are misused.  That is flawed thinking.

Flawed thinking??? What are you like.

I think a sensible person might rather say we should not be allowing people to have guns without an extremely good reason given the relatively minute number of occasions when people need one to defend themselves.

Anyone who thinks unlimited guns are a great idea in any country needs to look at the statistics (the real ones, not the utter nonsense invented by the NRA in the US). 

4 hours ago, mcfish said:

It afraid statistics don't support you. You can drive as safely as you like until that minibus driver forces you into a ditch...

Sent from my SC-01D using Tapatalk
 

If you really look at the stats, most of the killed and injured are riding two wheeled vehicles not driving cars.

I've done the Flight of the Gibbon and I cannot see how anyone could possibly collide with anyone else on this zipline run; it doesn't make sense! Only one single rig is ever on the wire at any given moment and the traffic is entirely one way only, so how...

I guess if you were really dumb, you could get in the way at a landing stage and get injured by an incoming zipliner but really it is pretty hard to understand what may have happened here.

4 hours ago, Shawn0000 said:

 

I'm pretty sure that's just what we teach primary school kids as a way of getting their heads around certain aspects of sentence structure.

 

Here's something I just found on the net:

 

Here’s what some of the big usage guides say on the matter. The one that seems to get quoted the most is the Chicago Manual of Style, which says:

There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.

Both Garner’s Modern American Usage, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage call this belief a superstition. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (or MWDEU) says, “Everybody agrees that it’s all right to begin a sentence with and,” and notes that you can find examples of it all the way back to Old English. 

 

Hmmm! I have lived, amongst other places, in both the Netherlands and Flemish speaking Belgium. The fluency with which the citizens there have mastered the English language, and indeed other languages than their mother tongue, is nothing short of absolutely astounding. I'm not talking about university educated folk, just ordinary people doing ordinary jobs. In the Flemish speaking part of Belgium, you need to speak minimum three and preferably four languages pretty fluently to get a job on a supermarket checkout (Flemish being the local native tongue, French, English and preferably also German). If you think I am exaggerating, feel free to go there and check it out! The guy who ran the local "tyre and battery centre" in the small town where I lived spoke perfect English with a slight accent but also French and German aside from his mother tongue which was, of course, Flemish; the local newsagent could speak at least 6 languages fluently and those were just the ones I heard him speaking. Surprisingly however, if you go to the French speaking part of Belgium in the south of the country, you will find it hard to find anyone who speaks English that well and many people don't speak it hardly at all.

In Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland likewise just about everyone can speak fluent English.

Finally, in the Netherlands, exactly the same thing applies, everyone speaks perfect English, almost without exception. Whilst driving home from work in Amsterdam to my home in Belgium one day, I was listening to a BBC broadcast about the adoption of kids by gay couples. They interviewed a Dutch, male homosexual couple living in Amsterdam who had adopted kids that few other couples wanted to take on; kids who had a major mental handicap and whose intelligence was way below average.  After they had interviewed the couple who spoke perfect English, they interviewed one of the "handicapped" kids. She spoke a quite simple but very fluent English; I was astounded!

It seems to me that it is a question of good teaching but most of all of social expectation. In the northern European countries I have mentioned above, everyone is EXPECTED to speak fluent English, even kids with major learning difficulties, so they do it.

Most Burmese I have met speak very good English but Thais generally do not. I doubt if the teachers in Burma are any better or worse than here, but clearly the expectation is different.

In Britain, people are not expected to learn to speak a foreign language, so by and large they don't. Simple isn't it!

On 08/12/2016 at 5:38 PM, F4UCorsair said:

 

An aspect of this thread that I haven't seen anyone cover is the sensitivity of the test that they use. Whilst it may well be the case that cannabis is detectable in a forensic laboratory at very low concentrations for up the three months or more following use, normally the sort of tests they use for roadside screening are not going to be that sensitive,  as more sensitive = more expensive. Common sense tells you that there has to be threshold level at which a positive test will be triggered; it is not, for example, going to be positive if your urine contains only one of two molecules of cannabis metabolites. The trigger level is likely to be quite a high level so, moderate use in the past day or two or a real pot bender in the past two or three weeks would be my best guess. 

2 hours ago, Oxx said:

 

I don't know whether you've ever seen the US TV series "Hotel Impossible" which is about an acknowledged expert advising struggling hotels.  Oh so frequently one of the major issues is that the hotels don't get their pricing right - usually charging far too little, and not raising enough at peak season.  So, yes, many hoteliers do need to be told to raise prices when appropriate, because they are generally rather clueless lacking commercial acumen.

 There is a similar series on television in the UK and I booked one of the hotels that had been on the programme as I had to go back to my home town for a funeral. It was absolutely the worst hotel I have ever seen in the UK and God knows I have seen some sh1tholes! Nothing worked properly, the jacuzzi style bath was broken, the water pressure was so low, it was all but impossible to take a shower, the lock on the door was broken so it couldn't be locked, all in all it was absolutely tragic. A number of hotels where I have stayed in Thailand have had similar issues. The thing that hotel management needs to learn is to set standards and stick to them, raising prices is a great idea if standards are maintained, a piss awful idea if they are not. Over here, generally they are not maintained!

7 minutes ago, melvinmelvin said:

 

I have a list of things I don't really understand in Thailand.

 

On the list is Why do foreigners, like on this thread, complain so much about Thai's ability or lack of ability to speak English?

This is Thailand, most Thais speak Thai. Some of them also speak English, various quality though, but never mind.

 

If Thais want to learn speak English, fine.

If they don't want to learn speak English fine.

Their choice, nothing to complain about. I just can't understand all this complaining. This ain't Kansas.

 

 

It was remarked in a post above that American stuff like gallons inches and a few more things are hardly used anymore outside the US.

WRONG!

Inches are used WORLD WIDE for several applications, threads on pipes and sensors ate the first that come to mind.

 

 

I did say "hardly used", not never used. I wouldn't say that just BSP is wholesale adoption of the Imperial system of weights and measures worldwide, would you?

In Britain, miles are still used on road signage and where vehicle speeds are expressed MPH is used. Fuel consumption is still expressed in MPG (miles per gallon) although, helpfully of course, the British use a completely different gallon to the Americans. Pints are still used in pubs to measure beer but millilitres are used to measure spirits.

In France, people still ask for "une livre de ..." a pound of... when buying vegetables but what they mean and expect to receive is 500 grams; the pre-metric French "livre" never was historically the same as the English and American one, in fact it was equivalent to American 17.27 oz. In the area where I lived in France, reclaimed oak timber from old barns was, rather quaintly, sold by the "pied cube" the cubic foot however it was not the same foot as used in the UK and America which is alleged to have been derived from the length of the foot of Henry VIII. The unit in France is also known as the "pied du roi", the king's foot, and was derived from the length of the foot of one of their kings who took a different shoe size to Henry VIII and is thus a completely different size being 1.066 ft. Even if you hear people using what sound like US units, there is no guarantee that they are the same units you use in the US; to be sure, you would have to use the metric system to define them!

The BSP pipe threading standards (that's British Standard Pipe, not American standard) are still used in every part of the world that I have every visited and I was surprised to find that steel tapes here are dual marked in centimetres and inches. With few exceptions, just about every country in the world uses the metric system except the US and in fact if I remember correctly, the US lost a Mars probe at a cost of $ billions because the manufacturers of the rocket engine muddled up Imperial and Metric units. If you want to interact with scientists and engineers throughout the world today, you need to use metric units as that is the world scientific standard.

In the US, medicine uses metric units; you don't dispense medication in grains and minims, doses of solids are in milligrams and liquids in millilitres (or in "cc", cubic centimetres, which under the metric system, conveniently happen to be equal to millilitres)    

1 hour ago, dick dasterdly said:

 

 

You are wrong as the automatic response from an English person to their nationality is English - British is the second thought.

I have never heard of Englander being used as a confession of nationality. "I am an Englander"? No, that has absolutely never been used in English to my knowledge.

Where do you come from "I'm a New Englander" for sure, or even "You are a Little Englander" an insult justifiably applied to Brexit voters but never: "I am an Englander".

As with people who hail from Scotland: "I'm Scots" or "I'm Scottish" but never "I'm Scotch"

1 hour ago, TGIR said:

Four pages of comments and not a single commentator has thought to mention the

abysmal translations of Thai to English in most any dictionary or reference material.  As an example, Thais invariably cannot make an R sound to save their life, but looking at any written reference to translated Thai you will find an abundance of words that use "R" in the translation.  How would one even make that mistake if one was educated properly in both languages?

 

In addition, American English is used worldwide as the learning and speaking standard for Business (sorry Brits), but clearly most transliteration is done in what we call "old English".  Not only would this be confusing to an English speaking person, but imagine what is does to a Thai learning English.

 

Lastly, from the number of grammatical and spelling mistakes I see every day on Thai Visa, most of us would be quite unqualified to make a claim to speaking or writing perfect English, and even worse when attempting Thai, written or verbal.  Bashing Thais for their unacceptable language skills is absurd.  How many English speaking expats do you think can read or speak Thai fluently?  I'd bet on a percentage basis not many.

"In addition, American English is used worldwide as the learning and speaking standard for Business (sorry Brits)"

Really? The European Union (just a tiny market of some 400 million souls) is standardized on English English, in India (the worlds largest English speaking country; sort of) Indian English is standard, in Australia, Australian English - should I go on?

American English isn't really standard anywhere except in America; just like feet, inches, gallons and all those bizarre measures aren't really used much except in the US.  

It's not just Thailand that has dubious teachers of English. My French girlfriend's father bought a really expensive English course and he couldn't understand why, when I looked at it, I couldn't stop laughing. It contained such unforgettable gems as:

"We breakfasted upon boiled leg of mutton..."

and perhaps the best:

"I fear the weather may be inclement today, perhaps we should take our waterproofs"

Who, today, uses "to breakfast" as a verb

I was surprised to find that a waitress, in a restaurant that I frequent here in Chiang Mai, spoke excellent English and understood it even when spoken pretty fast. In the end I asked her where she had leaned to speak the language so well.

Answer: "at school".

I replied  "Here in Chiang Mai?".

"No in Burma, where I was brought up" she answered.

I have noticed that the Burmese do seem to speak stunningly good English compared to the Thais.