kwilco

I think that kind of remark says more about yourself than anything.

Again you're clinging to a false dichotomy - E for enforcement is only one factor in road safety. OK you mention licences too - licenses - this comes under E for education - and a "test" is only part of driver education which should be life-long learning - but in most cases it is just the accumulation of bad habits. We also know tht until the last decade or so the US driving test in most states was a joke - in fact the Thai test isn't that bad - it's just avoided by many people. Try getting an American to reverse park a car without laughing. Thais tend to look on driving as a necessity - something for work and goods - cars are a recent addition. In America driving is seen a a right InEurope it's seen as a privilege. All result in a different attitude to driving. Picking out or clutching at single issues - driving laws, licences will never give you an overview of road safety anywhere - the figures that you seem to fail to understand are not individual cases or personal anecdote - tey involve MILLIONS of motorists very few of whom drive "recklessly" 0 iit is their normal behaviour that when gathered into statistics give you an overall picture of what is happening.. Remember the plural of anecdote is not data.

I think now you are just "sealioning" ... Again you make another false dichotomy - your really need to brush up your critical thinking skills. - Nowhere in any of my posts have I said anything like you are suggesting. - I'm explaining both why Thai death rate is so high and why most people on this thread don't understand why as they don't understand road safety Nowhere in any of my posts have I said anything like you are suggesting. - but the btuse resistance by the public, media and authorities to understand th road safety "Safe System" means that there can be no significant improvement in Thai road safey - this I have said at least once before on this thread alone. Your reasoning skills and prejudgements are leading your failure to understand the topic of road safety.

“The only possible explanation “ -?? Well first observation is you are making a false dichotomy – you are only using “E” for enforcement and not the other 4 Es……you are also being lead again by perception rather than reality. To get the figures – do the math. Road deaths per 100 k in each country – divide that down by vehicle type then compare – in fact I used cars and pickups in the USA and EVERY kind of vehicle except M/Cs in Thailand … Thailand deaths per 100k in 4- wheeled (private, buses and commercial vehicles etc) = 8.829 USA – deaths per 100k in 4 wheeled (private only) = 10.6 - [Insurance Institute for Highway Safety] The truth is that the USA has a very poor road death rate and vey high alcohol driving rate too. Just looking at the death rate alone it is 4 times that of UK and other EU countries. (6 times that of Sweden) and only a third of the death rate of Thailand. Unlike places like Europe, Australia and New Zealand the USA haven’t adopted the “safe System’. The motoring laws are enforced individually state by state the figures put then 4 to 5 time higher than the better nations in Europe.

You have no evidence to support that. TheCivic isn't just one model so you aren't even making a proper comparison so your conclusions are unfounded. Here is a test Civic crash test results for ASEAN https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/cars-uvs/new-honda-civic-gets-five-star-rating-in-asean-ncap-crash-test/articleshow/87585753.cms

"my road" ????

clearly you didn't " "3rd sentence your previous post mentions UK 3rd party. Thats where I stopped reading"

THere's nothing in my post or any other to suggest that - there seems to be a spate of people not reading or understanding posts before they post.

If you actually bothered to read it you would have understood it before making a nonsense reply.

This is so not the way to do it - personal experience is worthless especially if it isn't engaged with critical thinking. It normally just results in confirmation bias. As I said earlier - I hae a lot of driving experience in Thiland but my most valuable asset is my training in road safety - and I don't mean police driving theory - although I do have copy of "Road Craft"

Staistics road safety and Emergency services You again are not looking at the big picture but determined to use smaller individual incidents and I'm not even sure what point you hope to make. For instance out of about 30,000 incidents there was ONE reliably reported one about 4 years ago that an ambulance was blocked by a stubborn or unaware driver. The standard of the vehicles, their equipment and training of the staff in them is another more universal problem. It is true however that traffic does not readily part to allow emergency vehicle through – compared to somewhere like Germany – this is a n “E for Education” matter. There is a "golden hour" for serious injury - although not a specific time it is proven that if a patient gets first response treatment of a high standard t at the scene it dramatically improves their chances of recovery and if they then get good emergency service at a hospital the sooner the better. The problem can be very serious - people with relatively minor injuries is not treated ASAP can go into shock an die. Thailand has no systems like this in place. If you come of your bike on Samui or anywhere else for instance there are competing ambulances that will debate on which hospital to take you - they get a fee of the hospitals - there have even been fist fights between ambulance teams over who gets to recover the people (or bodies). Recounting single possible issues isn't a good way to appraise the whole raod safety scenario but an overview of emergency service (E number 4) is could account for a significantly higher number of road deaths.. Unfortunately before one can get a good overview of road safety without relying on anecdotal evidence, guesswork and prejudice one needs reliable statistics. Thai stats are pretty poor and the ones that are available are only partial. however organisations like the WHO can make sense of what is available to a point so we get an overall picture. Again the media don’t look at these stats intelligently – they focus ONLY on one that is the number of deaths per 100k – tere are loads of others that show Thailand in a different light and they should t least be looked at together to get a good international comparison. Those stats include – deaths per miles covered/car ownership, miles covered per vehicle, road miles, density of traffic deaths per accident and one of the most important is the categorising of injuries into - Minor – major – and fatal – Thailand fails to do this. The stats compiled by Thailand don't actually conform to international conventions - only in the last couple of years have they begun to move towards a more compliant format. The problem with all this is that the media, members of the public and eve the government are left to make ridiculous comments on road safety that are completely without evidence or foundation – the myth of the “bad driver” accompanied by confirmation bias are allowed to run rampant – one result of this we ca be sure of is that for 30 years there has been no significant improvement in road safety in Thailand

you need an exercise in critical thinking - you're attitudes to road safety are archaic.

I'm referring to the cover in Thailand, If your rental bikes are taxed, this includes the national insurance scheme, which basically gives riders immediate emergeny medical help but practically nothing else. You then have the problem of damage to your machines and the property of others. A rental company should in theory have this cover too, but it seems that many rely on the belief that te "rich" foreigner renting the bike can pay for any damage. Sadly this is often not the case. The second issue is medical insurance for the renter - firstly they may not have any. They may have insurance not are not aware it doesn't cover motorcycling under "extreme" activities or as I said earlier they may rent a bike over the specified engine size (what size are your wife's bikes???) Then if they are not fully licensed, their insurance won't cover them. It is now the responsibility of te rental company to ensure that anyone they rent to is fully covered under Thai law - e.g. licensed.

You must have the original licence - the IDP is essentially just a translation of that. It is only valid so long as you licence is valid - the police will check the dates correspond and vehicles permitted. Before 2020 you could argue that an IDP wasn't necessary with a UK licence because it has a photo, language and all the necessary categories required for the police to identify. However, since then Thailand has ratified the Vienna convention (1968) which means you need an IDP that relates to the Vienna treaty - you issuer should ask you which treaty. THe IDP lasts for up to 3 years or as long as your licence - whichever comes sooner which is why you need to have both documents.

Read the post I replied to it was the government hospital.

I think people are talking about different insurance types There is the vehicle insurance given by the rental company - which at it's basest, is just the equivalent (or less) of the UK "3rd party" The other insurance is medical care provided in case of injury to th rider (or others) - for a tourist, this is a matter for their holiday insurance. I found out last week that the company I use only covers you for vehicles up to 125 cc. For this you must have A FULL UK MOTORCYCLE LICENCE. This needs now to be accompanied by an IDP with the category for motorcycles stamped on it. Non full licence holders don't qualify. the other problem is that many of the step-throughs for rent these days are 135 to 150 cc which a tourist may not be aware of. If you want to rent a larger bike, you will have to check with your insurance provider and probably take out a special cover clause. THe Thai authorities are clamping down on the motorcycle rental companies and in theory they can be prosecuted for renting bikes to unqualified riders. for instance this February "Legal Action Being Taken Against Motorbike Rental Operators in Patong" - https://thephuketexpress.com/2023/02/10/legal-action-being-taken-against-motorbike-rental-operators-in-patong/ Setting a a motorcycle rental business used to be an easy wa to raise a little cash . -the overheads were low and there is a common contract you can download or get from a law shop. However Thailand is getting wary of the increasing number of patients who can't pay for their treatment for M/C injuries and are trying to do something about it. Phuket is the most "European-ised" of all the provinces, but it is likely that others will soon follow - Samui in particular.

Why did you post these addresses?

I'm not going into the case here, but i can tell you it was pure unadulterated incompetence - you don't even know what kind of cancer it was yet you are already making assumptions. As I have a basic medical knowledge ,but better still a good knowledge of how Thai helthcare works in these places having worked there myself, I was able to see the nonsense going on. I worry about patients who go into Thaihospitals and often treatment falls at the first fence - government or private - they have none primary syatem so diagnosis is just hit or miss. Once they set you off on that trail other options are ignored. With the girl in hospital the difference in attitude and treatment between payers and non-payers is astounding.

what is?

No I'm not I'm reporting various organisations on road safety - including the WHO. citing single or hypothetical incidents is misleading - I'm basing my posts on the hardest evidence available - thousands of crashes and to assess human error, millions worldwide over the years. you need to re-read my bit about humanerror - you are fixating on the extreme end of RTIs tht actually only make up a tiny part of te deaths on Thai roads or in any country.

You'd need to come up with some hard evidence for that. For instance you are LESS likely to die in a 4-wheeled vehicle in Thailand than in the States - regardless of the numbers of people in the back of pickup trucks. although you may see more than 2 people on a motorbike I know o no figures to say what proportion of them are fatalities. We do know that motorcycles account for 4 times more deaths than on 4-wheelers. Whilst pickup are inherently less safe than sedans their are no figures to look at this. vehicles on the roads of Thailand probably go back about 15 years or so - but that in itself isn't unusual so one would expect that the build quality is about the same as other countries. THe "E" for engineering here could play a part as unlike many countries the process for establishing road worthiness in pretty useless. .so not so much original build quality as maintenance quality. I expect that seat belt wearing is a factor, but the wearing of seatbelts is increasing in Thailand, but the death rate still isn't changing. As for speed, I know of no way that anyone can confirm this - the figures suggest that speed being a factor in crashes is more o less exactly the same as it is around the rest of the world. Even alcohol involvement in crashes although at the high end compared to Sweden and UK, is not wildly more than in the USA. As the collision rate in Thailand is similar to that in the UK, I think we do need to look at what happens AFTER a crash starts to unfold - one thing that concerns me is the total lack of a truly standardised first responder and emergency service as well as a follow-up Emergency room service in Thailand. THe UK system - when it works, has an emergency response time of 8 minutes - I've never heard of that being achieved anywhere in Thailand - even if you crashed on a hospital doorstep! As said, a further problem with Thai road deaths is the road environment - once the crash has started the environment is far more toxic that on a well-prepared European road. so I don't think it is any one single factor I think when it comes to fatalities there are a combination of factors that lead to Thailand being a perfect storm

QED - what bout the rest? people are so predictable... and dare I say it? Conceited? I've said all along that human error is common to ALL of us...except you? ...and apparently you think Thai people don't think that way too?

It is a very common illusion that when people are driving in an "alien" environment they get the impression that everythinh is moving much aster - in fact it is their brain working overtime trying to assimilate the unfamiliar

The arrogance of “western” drivers…… Detailed anecdotal descriptions of how “bad” other motorists driving achieve nothing. Without analysis, all they do is reinforce those people’s prejudices about driving in Thailand - i.e. blaming people or even the entire nation, rather than considering the underlying causes. There is also the temptation to attempt simplifying matters by looking for one single solution for the whole problem; a sort of road safety panacea · Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead. ... A few common truths about how motorists see themselves versus other road users “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” - George Carlin “ ….. there are only three types of drivers; the too fast, the timid and oneself.” ― Virginia Graham, Say Please “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well, drive and make love.” – Stirling Moss Dunning-Kruger effect: - a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general. – Individuals do not believe they are dangerous on the roads but at the same time fervently believe others are. • I am not likely to be responsible for an accident; others are likely to be responsible. Therefore, little I can do. • Hence, less likely to need to “plan to avoid them” • Campaigns aimed at dangerous driving are for “other” drivers not themselves. • Such campaigns re-emphasise this difference (2CV, 2008 and Flaming Research, 2008) • The third-person effect (Davison, 1983). • High support for enforcement, engineering solutions and education • But not for themselves - for other people. However, the reality can be a long way from these benighted perspectives

any motorcycle with a tax paid on it will have basic emergency cover, after tht you're on your own. I'm sorry but if hospitals don't think you cn pay they will minimise treatment, and if funds don't come, you'll just slip away.