kwilco

I think you should read my comments on the 5 Es - one of which is enforcement. THis is part of the Safe System which Thailand needs to adopt to make any progress in road safety - hence why the post is about perceptions and reality

no they haven't they just compare performance but don't explain why.

this thread is about how well people speak English - can you make your opinion clear in that language?

Like so many on this thread, you experience of Thai's English Proficiency is limited to bar girls.

I seriously doubt you have ever worked in Thailand and experienced the many languages used in industry and commerce. However I'm sure you've spent a lot of time talking to bar girls

Why? Can you explain?

obviously have never worked in Thailand, then

Firstly Abhisit was born in Newcastle, and many Thai people (about 30%) are of Chinese descent and have spoken Chinese since childhood.

What are you basing that assessment on and WHO? V/N ses a western based writing system and Philillipines use the normal Latin script. Singapore is a small city state famous for it's draconian laws and edc=ucation - most people are multilingual. In Thailand many people speak Thai, Laos, and Chinese, Korean, Japanese as well as some English and now a bit of Russian. since Brexit the importance of English in countries like Thailand has also diminished

You need to see how it's done in other countries. I used to have to guage language levels and quite frankly I don't think most people know how to do it. Also langauge acquisition isn't necessarily carried out at school level, it is often after school age. I also note that almost all Thai kids know the western alphabet which many other countries don't.

sme EF company every year - got nothing to do with reality, just trying to sell their product.

It's about perceptions and reality of road safety - My main point is that many farang don't understand traffic, the driving environment or road safety in Thailand - the perception is misleading, so they can't understand the situation in Thailand. THey also don't understand that their home country has been adopting the Safe System or variations on it for several decades. The Safe System approach to road safety aims to eliminate fatal and serious injuries by designing a transport system that accounts for universal human errors and vulnerabilities. It focuses on five Es as mentioned above. It is a public health program and those who have already benefited from it don't realise it's there and protecting them - the sad side effect is that people fail to recognise this and think because their country has a lower death rate, it's because they are all better drivers than in Thailand.

THis is about perceptions and why they are so wide of the mark - QED. You are being guilty of lazy thinking - you cover you lack of knowledge with cynicism - the truth is that the total amount of productivity loss caused by road traffic accidents alone was approximately 121 billion Baht (45 billions for fatalities, 7 for disabilities, 67.5 for serious injuries and 1.5 for slight injuries), or close to 0.8% of the country's GDP. Many people in the uthorities re not satid=sfied with this but as with many people on this thread, their perception is askew - this prevents significant progress (I've mentioned this before). however there have been impovements - it is also difficult to quantify them as yet; the dust has to settle from covid. THere are factoirs that have made the situation worse over the last ten years and these need to be balanced against factors that have worked. This year, government has various measures in place that may inprove things in the next few years (target 2030) Thailand has multiple committees and groups that work on road safety, including a Parliamentary Advisory Group, a Road Safety Working Group, and subcommittee they have also engaged the services of IRAP, which signals a seachange in policy as this involves using the Safe System

If you got a ticket, you didn't slow down, did you? then you have to pay it - or dispute it and Thailand as yet has no effctive way to do this.

which it doesn't

No you said data was "observation"

drunk fortune teller? You've lost it! "NO ONE'S said the whole population suffers from incompetency in driving." - yes you did anda few others - And ...ah yes, because counting 37 infractions on a single drive makes you a road safety expert. By that logic, if I count 37 typos in your rant, I must be a linguistics professor. You keep repeating the same tired point: ‘It’s the driver’s fault. You act like Thai people are born bad drivers instead of shaped by their environment.’ but ignoring systemic failures—lack of enforcement, poor training, and cultural attitude claiming they play no role is sheer ignorance. And spare me the ‘I see more bad drivers here than back home’ routine. That’s confirmation bias 101—you expect bad driving, so you notice it more. Your anecdotal experience is not scientific proof. Maybe step out of your own echo chamber and realize that real solutions come from research, data, and systemic change—not your personal tally of traffic violations

read the thread - as you obviously haven't You won't be able to take part.

Up to you - but it has nothing to do with road safety. As I quoted earlier, that is the attitude that many friegeners have and the Thai authorities - "Their lives don't matter to politicians”: [it's]The necropolitical ecology of Thailand's dangerous and unequal roads"

Ps how do you feel about 181 kph in a 50 kph zone or an average of 145kph in 110 zone?

Ah yes, the brilliant scientific method of ‘I saw it, so it must be true.’ Who needs controlled studies, statistical analysis, or decades of research when we have your eyeballs collecting ‘data’ with all the accuracy of a drunk fortune teller? By your logic, if someone ‘sees’ five bad drivers in a day, that’s enough to declare an entire population reckless. If ten people ‘see’ the same thing, we should just throw out every road safety study ever conducted. Hell, why even have researchers when we can just rely on random guys like you on the internet who ‘see things’ and mistake anecdotal bias for fact? Remember the plural of anecdote isn’t data! What you re repeatedly doing is the intellectual equivalent of saying, ‘I saw a guy smoking and he lived to 90, so smoking isn’t bad for you.’ It’s not data. It’s blinkered, small-minded reasoning that collapses the second you apply even a shred of critical thinking. But you don’t know what that is either If you want to be taken seriously, try understanding the difference between scientific evidence and whatever nonsense your gut tells you. (and your gut is so full of it, it really deserves an enema). Until then, leave the actual analysis to people who know what they’re talking about.

so read my initial post - perception v reality

Every post you make shows how you fail to understand even the most elementary concepts of road safety…. You keep insisting that ‘it’s the driver first’ as if road safety operates in a vacuum, but that’s not how traffic science works. The Safe System Approach, used globally by experts, acknowledges that human error is inevitable, which is why infrastructure, enforcement, education, and vehicle safety are all critical factors in reducing accidents. Your fixation on blaming the driver is ignoring decades of research showing that speed management, road design, and law enforcement and the driving environment significantly impact accident rates. Studies by the WHO and transport, health and safety organisations worldwide confirm that high-crash regions often correlate with poor infrastructure and weak enforcement—not just ‘bad drivers.’ “many are in accidents on straight highways, with safe vehicles “ – this is such a facile comment! How can you be so ill-informed?? – Only in Thailand?? Even in ‘safe vehicles’ on ‘straight highways,’ variables like fatigue, road design (surfaces/signage etc), speed limits, lane discipline, and enforcement gaps all contribute to accidents. You still don’t comprehend the universality of human error (yet you display it in every comment you make). Trying to pretending otherwise is just lazy thinking that ignores established road safety science. You also make huge assumptions as to what constitutes a safe vehicle. You have post after post used assumption as “fact” – when it is clear you don’t know how to put forward real evidence in any of your comments - it would be stretching the definitions to call them arguments – gainsaying maybe… So no, it’s not just ‘the driver first.’ It’s a system-wide issue, and refusing to acknowledge that is exactly why road safety stagnates. And all your postulations fall at th first fence

...and you think you're smart enough to know that? -

For someone obsessed with ‘not assuming,’ you make a lot of assumptions. You claim to understand data but reduce everything to ‘attitude’—a vague, unmeasurable excuse that ignores infrastructure, enforcement, and systemic flaws. Observations alone don’t produce meaningful data—that’s why professionals use controlled studies, statistics, and comparative analysis, not just personal experiences. Saying ‘it’s the driver first’ is like blaming a plane crash solely on the pilot while ignoring mechanical failures, training deficiencies, and air traffic control. And for all your bravado, this isn’t chess—it’s pigeon chess and you are the pigeon.... but you wouldn't know BTW – when it comes to experience, which you keep harping on about, I have MUCH more valid experience than you.