20 things to think about when considering misconceptions about road safety

[Airbagwill]

3 hours ago, electric said:

Airbagwill .... your original post has many valid points for consideration.

 

However, your OP reads like someone has asked you to present a 10 minute dissertation at a conference of Transport Ministers, who, by the end of the speech are only wondering what delights are on offer at the morning tea break.

 

No one doubts the need for a change in road safety in Thailand. For me, it's all about changing driver attitude, and better enforcement.

 

Find the magic wand for those 2, and overall road safety will improve.

 

 

I'd say the it is precisely because people think they can boil the solution down to one or two factors that is the source of many of the misconceptions.

(you chose Education and Enforcement)

I have also mentioned at length why "enforcement" is a lot more complicated than just saying it.

It requires police trained in road safety, it requires police trained in road traffic law, evaluation of crashes and a new environment that separates the police from judiciary and of course the elimination (or at least reduction) of corruption.

On top of that if you want to process traffic laws the roads themselves have to be clearly and consistently marked designed and constructed - this hasn't happened yet.

So before you can train drivers and police you also ned to sort out E for engineering.

One also has to quest ion how many deaths are the result of the dreadful state of E - for emergency services - again this is partly down to police training on how they react swiftly and competently to crashes.

 

so if you look through that, you'll see that all 5 Es are inter-connected and you really can't have one without the others.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Airbagwill

[Airbagwill]

4 hours ago, NanLaew said:

All accidents are preventable.

 

That concept is all that anyone needs to understand.

hence the expression there is not such thing as an accident.

they are not acts ofGod and they are frequently down to a series of unfortunate events - all preventable.

[NanLaew]

A couple of comments and posts resonated with me. The drivers who relinquished the car keys to their partners or simply stopped driving. My father was a career policeman who had attended many defensive driving courses at Tulliallan in Kincardine and taught me how to drive, had never had a car accident in his life but he had seen his fair share of car accidents, death and dismemberment in his years on patrol. Suddenly, when he was about 68 years old, he decided that the free public transport by way of his pensioners bus pass was far more enjoyable than accommodating the idiots he encountered on the roads and sold the 'black maria'. If we wanted a ride in a comfy, flash car, he could wait until one of my twice-yearly visits to the clan cave.

 

I had my only car accident in Thailand back in 80's, within maybe 2 years of driving here. Back then, there were far less cars but I still managed to become a statistic. The other driver was sh!tfaced and t-boned me as he shot out of the parking lot of the Galaxy massage parlor in Bang Saen... remember that one anyone? That was back in the bad old, pre-mandatory insurance an pre-Highway 7 days. Being the farang in the shiny new Toyota Crown, I had to fork out for the repairs to the front end of his surprisingly solid HQ Holden. I can still recall the 'negotiations' in a sala out front of the police station.

 

Move the clock forward about 20 years and I am back, mostly enjoying driving, especially long shots between Isaan and the beach. Move the clock forward another 10 years or so to the present and the enjoyment of driving in LOS has completely gone. I still drive around locally but the truck stays in Udon and AirAsia takes the strain these days since there's a choice of car rental outfits at U-Tapao. I have about 10 more years before I jack it all in like my dad.

 

So what the OP is saying is that all that's needed is the "5 E's" to be sorted otherwise the Thailand road safety cart will always be before the horse?

 

Since that isn't going to happen any time soon, for now I will remain resolutely confident in my own driving abilities versus those of the general population, including all other know-it-all foreign drivers. I will continue to call idiots when I see them, railing silently in my air conditioned cocoon and shielded by my tinted windows but augmented by my 113 dB Kenworth air horns (for the deaf idiots) and a million gigalumens of LED floodlighting (for the night idiots). I will continue to drive (mostly) defensively... unless the airhorn and lights didn't work and being defensive looks like I will come out worst on any head-to-head.

[Airbagwill]

15 hours ago, NanLaew said:

A couple of comments and posts resonated with me. The drivers who relinquished the car keys to their partners or simply stopped driving. My father was a career policeman who had attended many defensive driving courses at Tulliallan in Kincardine and taught me how to drive, had never had a car accident in his life but he had seen his fair share of car accidents, death and dismemberment in his years on patrol. Suddenly, when he was about 68 years old, he decided that the free public transport by way of his pensioners bus pass was far more enjoyable than accommodating the idiots he encountered on the roads and sold the 'black maria'. If we wanted a ride in a comfy, flash car, he could wait until one of my twice-yearly visits to the clan cave.

 

I had my only car accident in Thailand back in 80's, within maybe 2 years of driving here. Back then, there were far less cars but I still managed to become a statistic. The other driver was sh!tfaced and t-boned me as he shot out of the parking lot of the Galaxy massage parlor in Bang Saen... remember that one anyone? That was back in the bad old, pre-mandatory insurance an pre-Highway 7 days. Being the farang in the shiny new Toyota Crown, I had to fork out for the repairs to the front end of his surprisingly solid HQ Holden. I can still recall the 'negotiations' in a sala out front of the police station.

 

Move the clock forward about 20 years and I am back, mostly enjoying driving, especially long shots between Isaan and the beach. Move the clock forward another 10 years or so to the present and the enjoyment of driving in LOS has completely gone. I still drive around locally but the truck stays in Udon and AirAsia takes the strain these days since there's a choice of car rental outfits at U-Tapao. I have about 10 more years before I jack it all in like my dad.

 

So what the OP is saying is that all that's needed is the "5 E's" to be sorted otherwise the Thailand road safety cart will always be before the horse?

 

Since that isn't going to happen any time soon, for now I will remain resolutely confident in my own driving abilities versus those of the general population, including all other know-it-all foreign drivers. I will continue to call idiots when I see them, railing silently in my air conditioned cocoon and shielded by my tinted windows but augmented by my 113 dB Kenworth air horns (for the deaf idiots) and a million gigalumens of LED floodlighting (for the night idiots). I will continue to drive (mostly) defensively... unless the airhorn and lights didn't work and being defensive looks like I will come out worst on any head-to-head.

So how does this relate to misconceptions about road safety in Thailand?

It does show that people perceive other drivers as idiots outside Thailand.... Scotland to be precise wonder if it highlights the need to recognise one's own driving skills and limitations, especially with the onset of age.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Airbagwill

[NanLaew]

9 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

So how does this relate to misconceptions about road safety in Thailand?

It does show that people perceive other drivers as idiots outside Thailand.... Scotland to be precise wonder if it highlights the need to recognise one's own driving skills and limitations, especially with the onset of age.

I thought that the 'conclusions' to be drawn from the above were pretty obvious already but thanks for making them more clear. There are idiot drivers everywhere but with Thai's being the vast  majority of idiots on Thailand's roads, there's not much point in wasting time asking the huge minority of foreign drivers to think outside the box on how they see themselves before they can appreciate why the local's do so badly.

 

After you admitted to being guilty of committing 'road rage' in a much more law abiding driving environment such as the UK, you self-administered your own time-out. Then you describe your subsequent Thailand driving experience as "very relaxing therapeutic, even"?  Really? I assume that this highway Nirvana is a result of your post road-rage research and theory? Maybe you can cut to the chase and share your epiphany (in less than 1500 words) with the members here. Members who, like myself with  hundreds of thousands of kilometers on Thailand's highways, are still cursing and white-knuckling it to the shops, beach, mountains, etc..

 

Anyway, the 'misconceptions' that you ruminate over remain just as they always have been, your concept of other people's misconceptions.

 

Your 'paper' is all over the shop , with arbitrary but frankly unrelated historical quotes chucked in with references to studies in psychology and a grammar lesson. Now there's geography too?

 

Your glib reference to boating in your 20th utterance didn't lend anything to any 'discussion' on the unique cultural influences on driving habits in Thailand. Just an allusion to some after-dinner speech style witticism; all fluff with nothing of substance inferred or taken.

 

Rather than why does Thailand's culture ignore safety, how about, 'Why is there no safety culture in Thailand?"

 

A 1500 word OP was always going to be a no-hoper anyway.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Ron19
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