kwilco

You are totally blinded by your own bias

So many fail to realise that in a true democratic election the "redshirts" would have won hands down fo the last 2 decades.

Just goes to show that no matter what, he really isn't a democrat....and never will be.

what a amazing non-sequitur!

that simply isn't true - check the tats and you'll find the death rate is even higher than neighbouring Samui with 2.7 million visitors against KT's 400k. and a reidential population a fraction of the size.

Innocent or not, in any normal legal system the case would never have even come to court, after the police and public had tampered with the evidence, there was nothing capable of standing up in a court of law. It's sad that after that fiasco people still seem to trust any announcement by any of the authorities on that island.

The main argument about "crimes" etc on Koh Tao is the behaviour of the police - whether it is ineptitude or obscuring evidence so your very first premise is questionable. You are also basing you argument on crimes per number of visitors - this has to be backed up with solid statistics It would be naive to say that post-mortem procedures in Thailand are up to standard anywhere, let alone on Koh Tao island..

Now I referred to your own post - how do you see that as "control freak"? If you haven't understood what human error actually is, then how can you coherently comment on it. You don't seem to understand the difference between "speeding" (your term) and human error. Human error is the CAUSE of an accident - speeding isn't the cause it exacerbates the effects of human error.

How do you come to that conclusion?

As you said you haven't read the post so are unable to make a relevant comment.

so there you have it = QED - people just don't understand raod safety and worse won't educate themselves.

"A long history of unfortunate deaths on a small island with a tightly knit community and a comparatively huge number of annual visitors may not be as sinister as it sounds but the 2014 murder of two British tourists Hannah Witheridge and her compatriot David Miller continues to haunt Ko Tao. It certainly requires more sensitivity from authorities to protect Thailand’s tourism reputation which is suffering." It's actually comments like this unsupported by any concrete statistics that harm the island's reputation. Te problem is that it seems that it is the opposite of the truth and just an effort to make the problem go away.

I'd recommend the OP gets some therapy ASAP. the OP is a particularly disturbing post, but it shows how expats fail to integrate and instead take on a condescending few of their neighbours. This is a person flying headlong into trouble for himself and probably others. leaving town (or the Country) is not an option to the OP because his problems will follow him.

At long last Thailand is adopting normal motoring laws - it's about time but this piecemeal process won't work unless it is part of a complete holistic overhaul of road safety in the kingdom. The main obstacle is the ignorance of the powers that be who are totally uninformed on road safety and just think because they drive they understand road safety. All they are doing is giving a cursory glance to other countries and picking the odd bit of regulation or legislation here and there. The problem is that imposing fines (and points) will have no significant effect unless there are systems to back it up. All bigger fines do is increase the likelihood of corrupt practices. It is already filtering through that people being stopped by the road side police are being asked for more money - 200 baht has increased to one thousand. it won't be long before we hear of the wealthy and important avoiding point accumulation on their licences. Speeding tickets will be waived and machines won't be calibrated. The situation at present is there is no system for enforcement - police and courts are totally unprepared for this. Roads are not properly marked and signed, and almost any offence could be up for debate by those with the money. for an enforceable fine system to work, Thailand must reform the police, reform the courts, redesign the road, train police to operate new equipment, install reliable cameras on parts of roads that are actually designed to have cameras on them - build roads to higher safety standards and re-educate the public. The changes required have built up over the past 3 or 4 decades largely du=e to the ineptitude and ignorance of successive authorities, the changes needed are so great as to be constitutional - maybe the measures around traffic lights are a sign of a change in attitude, but they are such a minute step in the right direction as to be insignificant or even useless.

here's a defintion of what human error actually is..... and how ALL of us do it..... What is human error There is no way anyone can totally avoid human error, that is why health and safety designs systems to anticipate this. Human error is something done that was not intended by any person. It’s often a very small aberration but the consequences can be serious if not anticipated by architects and designers road and vehicle engineers and designers. Good design anticipates these “little” errors. Human error is usually the major factor in the failure of safety in any structure. So steps are normally taken to anticipate this. Human errors work in different ways: It has been shown that human error falls largely into one of three principle categories. First is a perceptual error. Critical information that is below the threshold for seeing - the light was too dim, the person was blinded by some glare, balcony had low contrast parameters. In other cases, the person made a perceptual misjudgement (a balustrade’s handrail or slippery surface or just, poorly defined glass panels Second and far more common cause is that the critical information was missed because the person had been drinking and the design of the item in this case balcony did not accommodation this. So if the person hadn’t been drinking there was a failure to notice because mental resources were focussed elsewhere. Often a person says they did not "see" something plainly visible from a different perspective Finally, the person processes the information correctly but for one reason or another doesn’t choose the correct response because of slow reactions or make the correct decision yet fail to carry it out - e.g. fail to grab hold of the handrail. Just saying “I’m always careful” doesn’t work because with human error, much of our information processing occurs outside of awareness So the point of a proper road safety system is to protect against the consequences of inevitable human error

It is a sad characteristic of road safety in Thailand that crashes are not evaluated properly - the police simply aren't trained to do this and the statistics collected are unsatisfactory. Regardless of what does or doesn't remain of the van is is perfectly possible to accurately calculate the speed the van was travelling its trajectory and any failings in the installation of the fuel system. One can also look at the road itself and see what the nature of the side of the road was where the van crashed and how much it exacerbated the damage to the vehicle and further endangered the lives of the occupants.

I think you need to familiarise yourself with Road safety stats in Thailand. Toyota have about 90% of the market share in minibuses - in acce=idents they are classified along with big buses - which are if anything more dangerous in an accident due to the way they are built. Motorcyclists account for 73% of =deaths. Buses etc 1%.. Honda motorcycles have the largest share of the market - and Yamaha trails in second place - however they are building very similar machines use similarly. The Toyota van has an almost monopoly on the minibus market being the only one manufactured in Thailand - it is also as said only sold in Japan and Philippines. I haven't looked into the local manufacturing spec - apart from finding out they are not for sale in EU - apparently for emission reasons.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Death-by-road-user-categorize_fig4_325871293

I don't think you understand what human error is...

- is basically as safe as any other fuel, however the system is probably not factory fitted.

It seems to be the van needs to be looked at. Buses and public transport account for about 1% of road deaths. Of curse when they happen they are multiple and grab the attention of the media. However th toyota Commuter vans are made in Thailand and account for over 90% of te market - this means they are by far the most common vehicles in accidents. This van or similar models are also available in Japan and Philippines. They aren't sold in Europe as they don't comply to EU regs. This doesn't mean the van itself is inherently unsafe, However not for the first time, I believe the occupants were killed in the subsequent fire - this poses the question of what were the "3 explosions" described by the sole survivor. Te LNP system I would imagine is fitted post production and again one should surely confirm that this was fitted according to rigorous safety standards, Human error my have been the initial factor in the accident but it seems quite possible that what could have been just injuries was turned fatal by the behaviour of the vehicle and the road environment in the crash. For comparison, a double decker overturned in the UK last week with 71 people on board - no explosion, no fire and no deaths.

Ah now you've resorted to ad homs and sealioning. After training in education and working in training and education for over a quarter of a century, I'm well versed in matters of care and discipline - and quite frankly as it is clear you don't have the experience now is neither the time or place to start to educate someone else from the ground up. It seems that just because people have "gone to school" and however little they did or didn't learn they need to realise they are NOT "experts" or "wise'. in fact it suggests they really don't understand the basic concepts of understanding any topic let alone education. What I suggest you do is spend a few months researching education and cild psychology and in your case history until you get a good grasp on the topic.

Difficult to answer that - but you need to understand the science of road safety. Human error is the min cause of accidents - this is not what you describe above.This is and international constant and is addressed by a proper road safety policy. Basically the amount of drunk ,driving, reckless driving etc is the same in EVERY country in the world - what road safety legislation does is protect the public against what all drivers do. There are basically 5 areas that have to be addressed... enforcement, education, engineering, emergency services and evaluation. Thailand for decades has patently failed in every aspect of this - until these areas are addressed holistically, there can be no significant progress in road safety in Thailand. At present there are a few attempts to bring road safety in Thailand into the 21st century but as the government doesn't understand the whole picture and bodies like the police haven't a clue these measures on their own are not likely to have any significant effect.. People who choose to continue the driver "blame game" merely show they don't understand road safety. Until this tops no progress will be made

It's sad how people mistake poor observation and lack of critical thinking for "experience" . What is needed is a true understanding of road safety. Successive Thai governments have failed to do this. Those who think that aiming vitriol and supposition at drivers are anywhere near to understanding the situation are just barking up the wrong tree.

do you realise that is an oxymoron?