"Benjaphaet" woman in lucky escape from "Death by Hanging Wires"

[webfact]

"Benjaphaet" woman in lucky escape from "Death by Hanging Wires"

 

Pictures (3) Thai Rath

 

Yet another motorcyclist has had a lucky escape from death after getting her neck entangled in Thailand's infamous hanging wires.

 

The rider on this occasion was a woman aged 25 - an age in which Thais believe something dramatic is bound to happen.

 

 

Nanthika Patphee was driving home at 1am on Saturday in a Sa Kaew housing estate in Wattananakorn district.

 

Wires had been blown down in the wind and they wrapped round her neck as she came off her Honda Wave.

 

She suffered a 20 centimeter laceration and hurt her right leg too.

 

Police were evidence gathering the next morning while a local - 58 year old Phanyamon Phayuhasit - complained that this was always happening and the authorities should do something to address the problem.

 

 

Thai Rath said in their headline that the victim was at the age of "benjaphaet" - most Thais believe that when someone is 25 something dramatic is bound to happen.

 

The victim went on a popular Sa Kaew Facebook page to recount her accident.

 

Source: Thai Rath

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-07-31

[zaphod reborn]

2 hours ago, webfact said:

Thai Rath said in their headline that the victim was at the age of "benjaphaet" - most Thais believe that when someone is 25 something dramatic is bound to happen.

That's what I thought.  It was her fault for turning 25.  Because it would be too hard to identify the cable/telephone line installer from the hundreds of somchais that climbed up those poles and were too lazy to sort the wiring, so instead, just added a flimsy cable which was likely to come down even in moderate windy conditions.

[Redline]

Third world from all angles ?

[Tradewind777]

The state wires are a reflection of Thainess.  Unless there is some education instead of a kind of religious faith in matters like wires,  the place has no hope of change. Unbelievable to have this resignation to a pathetic excuse. 

[Saladin]

I recall a woman being decapitated a few  months back. It's not hard to resolve the problem. Just decree that the electricity authorities and other wire hangers take their surplus wiring away with them or have a government agency do it for them, removing the installed attached wiring at the same time.

Thais take tolerance to stupid lengths.

[Jonmarleesco]

1 hour ago, Saladin said:

I recall a woman being decapitated a few  months back. It's not hard to resolve the problem. Just decree that the electricity authorities and other wire hangers take their surplus wiring away with them or have a government agency do it for them, removing the installed attached wiring at the same time.

Thais take tolerance to stupid lengths.

'Thais take tolerance to stupid lengths.'

 

They also take ignorance to stupid lengths. 

[Jonmarleesco]

9 hours ago, webfact said:

most Thais believe that when someone is 25 something dramatic is bound to happen. 

And when it doesn't? As will be the case, four times out of five. 

[cookieqw]

1 hour ago, Jonmarleesco said:

And when it doesn't? As will be the case, four times out of five. 

That doesn’t equate. Forget about it

[RocketDog]

I recently had a Very close, fractions of a second, encounter with a roadside garrot, AKA a hanging wire.

 

It was hanging very low and it was dusk, and I was traveling with the traffic but on the shoulder of the road. I was naturally hyperalert for attempts on my life by negligent fellow travelers, but had not yet thought of the silent death that such ubiquitous cabling offered the naive traveler.

 

The wind blew the cable up toward the road, and I only saw it from the corner of my eye as it fell back toward the ditch again just a split second before encountering my neck. I was on my Click but only traveling about 40km/hr. If I had been a wee bit faster the wire, without a doubt, would have caught under the very tight neck strap of my Bell helmet and broken my neck as it tore me from the bike.

 

It all happened fast enough that I didn't even have time to wet myself. I was badly shaken for an hour afterwards

 

The next day I located the wire, intending to cut it as it was small diameter and probably a communications cable and not electric power. I thought better of it though and settled for using roadside garbage (also ubiquitous) to tie a plastic bag to the cable and filling it with rocks, stopping it from swinging.

 

Now that I'm aware of this hazard I see it everywhere. I've thought for some time that I would eventually die in Thailand somewhere on the road, but never imagined it would be a simple wire that did it.

 

Note that this grisly death would not necessarily require assistance from a single one of the numerous Thai vehicle operators so willing to help the effort. It does however require the willingness of the entire population who allow these conditions to exist without protest.

 

TIP:

These wires cannot distinguish between natives and farang. A neck is a neck to them.

 

I regularly have fantasies of becoming a one-man crusade. Taking my insulated cutters and spending many beneficial hours funding and eliminating these hazards.

 

Without a doubt this would not end well. Some vigilant Thai citizen would report me and I would summarily be deported or rot in a Thai jail for years to come for providing this much-needed service to my adopted country.

 

So next time you lose electric or cable service look for a wayward skinny farang with a yellow/black Bell helmet traveling the roads very slowly eyeing the haphazard jumble of cables in your neighborhood.. And just smile and thank me.

 

If we all cut just one such cable each month at such potential death traps, the life we save could be our own.

Alternatively, and seriously, we could carry a supply of bright orange plastic bags (gods know there are plenty available Anywhere near you) and some rocks and string. Ever so often, just for fun and satisfaction, stop and mark theses hazards. This simple act both mitigates the problem but also draws attention to the issue.

 

 It is possible, and I mean only barely possible, that some Thai people would ponder the bags and perhaps comprehend the problem and the threat to life. Hell, even the original perpetrators of these traps, the wire pullers themselves, may have an epiphany.

 

But............. nah.. I'm only dreaming now.