kwilco

Then how do you explain the fact that most drivers manage to negotiate the roads without crashing into others” – this is a constant factor all over the world. As I pointed out the UK has the about the same number of daily collisions as in Thailand. “Reservations are designed to avoid cars driving into cars coming from the other direction” – Nowadays, almost ALL countries build new roads with dual carriageways – the reason as you say is to prevent oncoming vehicles colliding with each other, usually after a vehicle has lost control. Central reservations have international design conventions – this is to prevent those collisions and excessive harm to vehicle occupants The most common form is the Armco barrier – on impact with a vehicle it acts like a huge stretchy band – it absorbs the impact of the vehicle and prevents it from entering oncoming traffic. These barriers need to be fitted at the correct height and rooted and joined correctly. Meanwhile the central reservation has to be clear of any obstacles that might bring a vehicle to rest too abruptly – the most obvious being a tree or concrete street furniture. In some countries the preferred central barrier is a shaped concrete device – these can be effective in certain circumstances as they deflect vehicles back onto their own lane but they don’t have the same shock absorption qualities. At present Thailand is fitting Armco on some roads, but how well fitted they are, I can’t tell – You’d have to measure the height and depth of the anchoring. High fences are unlikely to prove effective as the stresses and strains would require a very sturdy structure taking up a huge amount of space.– a correctly fitted Armco can easily restrain a loaded 108 wheeler. You also mention two glaring examples of bad road design. Firstly U-turns – which are a total design failure as it encourages slow vehicles in the outside lanes of high-speed highways or even the blocking of multiple lanes by turning heavy vehicle. In recent years Thailand has limited the numbers of entrances and exits on some major roads but then install U-turns to allow access to other points along the road – the new U-turns involve a left hand exit and a bridge which is safer than the old U-turns. However any U-turn is just cheap alternatives to a proper light controlled roundabout system “even then I had a car fly through the top of a tree opposite my house. Thai drivers are very inventive and can defy the laws of physics.” – No they can’t it is precisely an understanding of te laws of physics that can reduce the death rate on Thai roads. For a car to fly through the air it requires a major failure in road safety design quite apart from how it left the road you point out is was stopped by a tree – one of the items that need to be closely monitored on Thai roads. Of course some of the other 5 Es would help with this too.. I have had an oncoming car fly over the central barrier and my car on a motorway – it touched the roof/tailgate of my car before ploughing into the traffic behind me – this was on the M1 motorway in the UK. You will never stop all collisions but you can reduce injuries and fatalities. In fact many countries in Northern Europe have set their sights on the “Zero” option – that’s no deaths – not necessarily no collisions. “But Thai drivers need more than the safety central reservation to avoid hitting others”- yet another racist generalisation that shows little understanding of true road safety.

Yes – what you have outlined, I’ve mentioned before – there is a problem with some foreign drivers in that they see a big, wide new road and think Thai roads are wonderful, but they never consider the design and engineering. There are national and international organisations that hope to promote road safety in Thailand but mostly their advice falls on deaf ears the 5 main pillars a can be summed up as below – in fact you have covered just about all of them in your post.. The 5 main pillars of the Safe System can be defines as follows: - The 5 “E”s of road safety. For over 3 decades Thailand has had various “Road Safety Action Plans” and has espoused the virtues of the 5 “E”s (with little effect) ... but without them, Road Safety in Thailand is doomed to stagnate. 1. Education 2. Enforcement 3. Engineering 4. Emergency 5. Evaluation 1. Education This is fairly self-explanatory - people need to be told/shown how to drive and given the “tools” to share the road with other users – This goes way beyond a solitary driving test when people first start driving. UK had several government TV campaigns in the 60s and 70s. Clever well thought out ads with a bit of humour that weren’t condescending and helped to establish the country as a safe place to drive. (Do you remember the elephant in the fog?). Education of drivers continues throughout their driving life. The first people to educate in Thailand would be the police. 2. Enforcement Again self-explanatory - but Thailand has the added problem of ingrained corruption, graft and bribery which impedes this, no matter how many laws are passed. The laws need to be reasonable applicable and equitably enforced too. The police and courts need to be trained to deal with it 3. Engineering: - most critics of (Thai) road safety usually ignore this aspect of road safety. It falls into 2 categories …. A - Vehicle engineering - Safer car design and engineering: - car safety is both “passive” (seat belts, airbags and construction etc.) and “Active” (braking steering, handling, traction control etc.) these two are really interdependent now with so much computerised and hi-tech features on modern vehicles.[1] · Anti-locking brakes (ABS) · Side impact bars · AVCSS – “Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems" · Electronic stability control (ESC) · Traction control · Air-bags · More reliable engine, tyres and components · Vehicle dynamics in general (they vary from UK and Thailand) Of course, roadworthiness checks are vital - but totally unenforced in Thailand. B - Road Engineering - The design and construction on the roads, bridges, junctions, road surface, camber, drainage etc. · The use of barriers and median (e.g. Armco), the removal of roadside hazards - e.g. trees or boulders on the side and centre of roads. The clearing of billboards and vegetation that obscure drivers’ vision · Traffic - the use of lines, signs, bollards etc. etc. to dictate how and where the traffic flows and at what speed - virtually non-excitant in Thailand and seldom noticed by drivers in countries that make good use of it. · Better infrastructure and engineering · Better road surfaces · Better signage · More forgiving · Traffic calming · Shared space - keeping various road users apart is key to safety in some situations - if they are separated they can’t collide. Like so many things on the roads in Thailand, the only reason that U-Turns happen is because the roads ALLOW it.... this is a design and engineering problem (and a cost reduction exercise), not so much a driver problem. 4. Emergency - What happens in the event of injury... this is a major factor in who lives or dies. It has been well documented that the time between accident and getting treatment is crucial in the survival of RTI victims. Treatment on the scene and reducing the time it takes to get the patient to hospital is vital. Thailand still has NO EFFECTIVE UNIVERSAL EMERGENCY SERVICE!! Ambulances have no standard equipment levels and what comes to your aid at an accident could be anything from a boy-racer pickup truck through van to a partially equipped ambulance. Paramedics are seldom fully trained. 5. Evaluation - How do we ascertain if measures are effective and what new ideas can be implemented. Most governments have agencies of some sort that after engaging any road scheme, whether it is construction or a safety campaign, review in detail every aspect of that project; effects on local population, environment, accident statistics etc. etc. Statistics are gathered and monitored and appropriate action taken. - Whereas Thailand may nominally have such bodies their effectiveness is just about zero. Road safety in Thailand is left largely to ill-thought out, baseless pronouncements made by members of the government with little better to do. Statistics collected in Thailand are incomplete, amateurish and don’t eve correlate with international conventions. PS – I have driven ALL over Thailand in 2 successive pickup trucks for nearly 20 years. Plus a few year/miles in rented vehicles and motorcycles. I’ve also driven all over Laos and a bit in Malaysia. [1] Active safety features are designed to prevent collisions and accidents from happening. Passive safety features, meanwhile, are meant to mitigate the damage of a collision that is unavoidable. https://www.toyotaoflancaster.com/blog/active-safety-features-vs-passive-safety-features/ https://carbiketech.com/active-safety-passive-safety/

-People are bad drivers all over the world - to suggest that one kind of person are bad drivers is judging by race. Racial slurs are characterised by various cliches - wild generalisations in the third person plural is one of them. The next cliche is misuse of the word "culture" to justify racist view People who take on these views are failing to understand even the basics of road safety, and rather than understanding the problem they just resort to racial generalisations about Thai people - basically its insulting Thai people when the real responsibility - public health - rests with successive governments

this is an inaccurate and archaic approach to road safety. Thailand and the UK have almost the same number of reported crashes, yet the death rate in Thailand is 12times that of the UK - can you give a scientific or evidence-based explanation to tat?

There you go "these people' - the purely racist and erroneous assumption. I was talking about - why is it that Westerners assume tey are so better at driving than Thai people? In fact they are so bad at driving on Thai roads they spend most of their time concocting vitriolic nonsense about other road users, yet claim they themselves are superb drivers. They have nothing to back this up except their own prejudices and confirmation bias

Well - there are specs different for cars in all countries - a lot depends on local laws but you still don't say what you are comparing to and you have chosen one model of car. In fact Thailand often exceeds the USA for pickup ownership - these vehicles are still inherently more dangerous than sedans, , the cars manufactured in Thailand have a much lesser crumple zone." - this is simply not accurate - you have to compare the same vehicles not the name. My UK Honda Civic was a UK built hatch the Thai model with the same name and year was a 3 box model - it had a trunk for a start.

Top me it just illustrates how little people understand about road safety. Rubber has shock absorption qualities if correctly used but you seem to think road safety in Thailand is a joke.

Totally wrong approach - road safety left that behind over 50 years ago.

There seems to be a general attitude on this thread that Thai people are inherently bad at driving - this is not true, it is however a racist attitude. The truth is that we are ALL bad drivers - humans are not designed to move at the speeds cars are capable of. There are crappy drivers everywhere in the world - road safety is a public health issue that governments address with varying amounts of success - the Thai authorities are abject failures in this. There is also a perception that "bad driving" causes accidents - the concept of "bad driving' is totally subjective and males baseless assumptions. Again the truth is that most crashes are caused by "human error" but most people don't actually understand what human error is. It isn't "reckless driving" etc. it is the range of slight errors that ALL of us make from time to time. Unfortunately one can see by the responses on this thread that people have no real understanding of what road safety entails and have an unjustified sense of superiority over Thai drivers. A nations road safety policy can only be as effective as it's government. They have in Thailand a massive job to correct the errors of the past 3 or 4 decades. Enforcement, Engineering Education Emergency and Evaluation need to be addressed holistically. Trying to blame divers for their shortcomings is not a solution - as can be seen for the past 30 years there has been no significant change in road safety in Thailand at all....until the government like those on this thread actually understand what road safety is all bout there can be no change.

What on eartth are you talking about???? - lesser than what?

Please explain.

Vehicles are designed with built in shock absorption characteristics. These are designed to protect the occupants - and those outside - by minimising the damage inflicted. Pickup trucks are inherently less effective at doing this than modern sedans. You often hear of people boasting that their truck received virtually no damage whilst the other car was crumpled to sheet. This of course actually shows that the cars shock absorption crumple zones were doing their job, whilst the truck had very little safe zones. In a crash, when the car comes to a sudden halt.... e.g. against a tree or in this case, an oncoming vehicle, the occupants will continue going forward until something stops them. The object of shock absorption is to decelerate the occupants as safely as possible without a sudden jarring halt. Usually seat belts and airbags help with this but the outside crumple zones are also crucial. It is also vital that the edges and middle of the road are designed to bring a vehicle to a halt as safely and gradually as possible. Thailand's roads, even new ones often fail to achieve this.

This road is typical of the poor design of Thai roads and no wonder there are so many crashes. One of the key elements here is the fact that vehicle crossed the central reservation. A good road is designed so this CAN'T happen...once it does the chances of fatalities soar. Another problem is what is in the middle and on the sides of the road.... this has a profound effect on the damage I curred by a vehicle. Remember too that in a 4 wheeled private vehicle inThailand the death rate is slightly lower than in the USA.

and there you have it - ethics!

There will be plenty of people who point out the lack of insurance, shouldn't have been riding an M/C etc. etc but they miss the elephant in the room - the total lack of ethics in the Thai heath industry.. Ironically many of those who blame the girl for her predicament are already victims of the same system - but they as yet are unaware of it.

the delays in reporting this incident only increase the chances of speculation.....just look at the Wyre river drowning.

With "respect" no it isn't - the delay is unnecessary - a coroners re[port does not mean a blaket ban on the press.

Duh! - That is exactly what the problem is!

I'm very concerned that the cause of death is not being revealed - this "wait for the coroner's report is not sufficient. Surprised the the authorities seem unaware of the problems caused by restricting the cause of death can cause.

what an ugly attitude!

Thanks,but what point are you trying to make?

It doesn't alter the FACT that you are seeing things in terms of race, a fallacious concept.

You are only reinforcing the stereotype of a racist Brexiteer - you don't seem to be able to understand that your entire argument is based of the fallacy of race.

I expect wristwatch manufacturers are rubbing their hands with glee.

That never existed, never happened and was never lost. - I've never heard a Brexiteer explain exactly what they meN by that.