Take no notice of him possum, you are just as likely to be right as him.

 

(Even if you do fly an un-British flag).

16 hours ago, possum1931 said:

Of course there is a lot of intelligent Thais, but the carnage on the roads tells you everything, and the majority of Thais who drive and ride are not intelligent, and what about the many Thai parents who give their motorbike keys to their underage children? Maybe you are right and it is not in the genes, me saying that was just my way of trying to understand it.

What I do notice is that the further one gets from Bangkok, the more the driving standards drop.  Probably a similar fall in education standards and general level of common sense/intelligence.  It would be interesting to see a 'heat map' of road deaths to see the hotspots, overlay this with exam results/school leaving age and wages - I would expect a high correlation. 

 

Driving from Bangkok to Pattaya for example starts as a fairly easy affair.  Bangkok driving is not much worse than most busy cities (once you know where you are going), expressway system is excellent and most drivers are OK.  Junctions are well policed plus effective cameras and apart from the usual smattering of queue-jumpers and rude pick-up drivers (from out of town?) it's fairly civil.  Driving down the motorway, or elevated expressway is fairly uneventful - then we get to the Chonburi by-pass and it's like getting transported to another planet; surrounded by mentally deranged pick-ups that insist on filling every gap between you and the car in front.  No more speed cameras so the average speed is now 140, or maximum possible.

 

Thai parents handing over the bike keys to young kids are just morons that should be locked up and the kids impounded along with the bikes, not gonna happen.

4 minutes ago, Cranky said:

What I do notice is that the further one gets from Bangkok, the more the driving standards drop.  Probably a similar fall in education standards and general level of common sense/intelligence.  It would be interesting to see a 'heat map' of road deaths to see the hotspots, overlay this with exam results/school leaving age and wages - I would expect a high correlation. 

 

Driving from Bangkok to Pattaya for example starts as a fairly easy affair.  Bangkok driving is not much worse than most busy cities (once you know where you are going), expressway system is excellent and most drivers are OK.  Junctions are well policed plus effective cameras and apart from the usual smattering of queue-jumpers and rude pick-up drivers (from out of town?) it's fairly civil.  Driving down the motorway, or elevated expressway is fairly uneventful - then we get to the Chonburi by-pass and it's like getting transported to another planet; surrounded by mentally deranged pick-ups that insist on filling every gap between you and the car in front.  No more speed cameras so the average speed is now 140, or maximum possible.

 

Thai parents handing over the bike keys to young kids are just morons that should be locked up and the kids impounded along with the bikes, not gonna happen.

Yes, I agree with everything you say, I do not drive much, but I do a lot of road trips on my motorbike, and have ridden in Bangkok quite a lot, the driving and riding standards in Bangkok are much higher than up here in Central Thailand, the cities like Nakhon Sawan, and Riot et are really very bad.