Wife and baby fall from top of Bhumibol bridge after 100 meter plunge

[realenglish1]

2 Lessons learned (Not) First a baby should be in a child restraint seat. 2nd People should wear their seat belt.

Both people would probably be alive today. Sorry for their deaths but I put the blame on the Thai government, not the driver

Mandatory child restain seats the same in the west. As for seatbelts, it is the law. Don't wear one then you may pay with your life 

[Classic Ray]

I don’t think it’s anything to do with economics or education, I think it’s more to do with lack of thought, the easy way and not being told what to do.

 

i have posted before taking my child to bilingual school with many parents driving new Mercedes, Fortuners, BMWs etc. Mine was the only one fitted with a child seat, and most kids were on parent’s laps in the front or standing up between the seats.

[ThaiFelix]

No matter which way you look at it...it is still very sad.   Sad because so preventable and sad because so much has been lost by this poor man.   Rip.

[Nyezhov]

7 hours ago, robblok said:

The government should put some money in video's of accidents and not only those you see when you have to change / extend your license. 

They show a video at the Movie Theatres full of blood and gore and sobbing.

 

As to the usual Thai bashing, road carnage is road carnage,  happens everywhere.  We all know the driving, traffic enforcement and roads suck here but these two folks arent even cold before the TVF bwanna brigade comes out. Lets educate the natives with their stupid superstitions. OK dudes, I got it, you are from the west, you are so much better.

 

And yes, I have been the victim of bad Thai driving myself. I chose to come here, I accept the risk, Im not going to change it nor is any amount of smarmy virtue signaling or nudging *wot wot, they are so childlike arent they, Hawhawhaw Clive, maybe they should try driver ed instead of spirit chasing, haw haw haw. 

 

Really dudes, let the dead RIP.

 

Be that as it may, I feel for the dude, he has to live with what happened. Now y'all feel free to react to this post with plenty of eyerolls, ad hominems and sads becasue Im not joining in the superiority fete.

 

 

[curtklay]

I don't see anything in the article about not wearing seat belts, poor tire maintenance, or excessive speed. It could have just been a tragic accident. So why don't all you assuming geniuses shut the F up and show some compassion.

[Ctkong]

9 hours ago, Davef2912 said:

Was she wearing a safety belt? Windows closed? Door locked?

 

When was the last time he changed the tires? And was the tire pressure correct?

 

- Thai people mostly start crying when it's too late and the disaster already happened instead of taking precautions to prevent them...  ????

Developing country ...par for the course. The real owner of the truck is probably not him so he has little say in vehicular maintenance unlike owner driver ( contract freighter) in deloped countries. 

Edited December 29, 2018 by Ctkong

[Ctkong]

8 hours ago, Tweedle dee said:

Endless graphic pics such as this NEVER seem to sink in with Thais, Amulets are the answer as always .

 

7 hours ago, Vacuum said:

Yes, I think you're right.

Thai motorists probably thinking ”thank god I am not driving a truck !” And carry on driving their cars ...

[Tweedle dee]

I shared this with my thai partner and her words where, do not come to live here ... stay away cos thats the way it is.  ??? up to you.

[bluesofa]

16 minutes ago, curtklay said:

I don't see anything in the article about not wearing seat belts, poor tire maintenance, or excessive speed. It could have just been a tragic accident. So why don't all you assuming geniuses shut the F up and show some compassion.

It's a news article in a forum, hence everyone is entitled to post their opinion.

Could you tell us how long is the period of compassion before you'd allow anyone to make a comment on it, apart from saying how sad it is - which it is.

 

A 'tragic accident' still has a cause.

Very true, it didn't say if they were wearing seat belts. However, it does say, "his wife and child who were passengers were thrown from the cab to their deaths 100 meters below." If they had been wearing seat belts that could not have happened.

Or should I have 'shut the F up' and not mentioned it, even though you've had your say?

[Ctkong]

1 hour ago, realenglish1 said:

2 Lessons learned (Not) First a baby should be in a child restraint seat. 2nd People should wear their seat belt.

Both people would probably be alive today. Sorry for their deaths but I put the blame on the Thai government, not the driver

Mandatory child restain seats the same in the west. As for seatbelts, it is the law. Don't wear one then you may pay with your life 

I think they are playing the odds that such an accident could never  happen to them... maybe one in a million?  So maybe a million child seat is not warranted in their mindset .... until it happen to them. Same for the belted seat belt. 

[Ctkong]

6 hours ago, bamboozled said:

This is utterly and totally heart-wrenching... I cannot imagine the depth of this mans grief. I am brought to tears.

 

I think people posting comments on here about what he should have done to prevent this, and what Thai folks should or shouldn't do, don't perhaps understand the role of poverty in all this. I believe most of the population has very little income. When you are dirt poor, you don't have options. You can say all this guy had to do was control his tires...but when you are poor and you need this job like you need to breathe, you don't go complaining to the boss that the tires on the truck are compromised. You shut your mouth and do the job you were told to do. You learn to shut down critical thinking and not dwell much about your miserable plight. You have to hedge your bets on hope which is all you have. Yes, you should wear your seat belt. But learning that takes education which takes money and free time to study...which takes away time from work. And it goes against the whole survival attitude you have learned that hope will get you through. Perhaps the family was with him because that is their only transport. When you are poor, you cannot afford a car, or motorbike, or extra bus ticket (2!) to send the family back home. Or perhaps their home is so miserable it's more comfortable and less deadening to ride around in the truck. It's too easy to pass judgement not knowing, and not appreciating, the facts of another persons situation.

Thailand has a two tiered system. Elites and others. So if you belonged to the ‘other’ club, then your life cost little.. until you become an elite. Then you would consider belting up and having insurance when driving... meantime if any untoward happened, you can always blame it on karma and destiny. They are the fall guys for the less fortunate ones.  

[Ctkong]

7 hours ago, marko kok prong said:

Awful,my heart goes out to all involved,but surely a working seatbelt would or more than likely saved the wife,the baby well probably not as no doubt she was cradling him,really a truck cab is no place for a young baby,look Thai people love their kids like most of humanity,so i cannot understand why they constantly put them at grave risk on motorbikes and in cars,how many baby seats have you seen installed here,try to get rear passengers to wear belts almost impossible,10 people in the back of a pick up,banned then overturned because many people are too poor to travel any other way, i am sure they would be better poor than dead.

If you look at the actions of the poor people here ,it seems as though they don’t mind being dead than poor. Maybe they hope to get another shot in their next life . Those driving conditions and lifestyles that promote early exit only reinforce the notion that the poor Thais seems to have a death wish. 

[chanangrak]

9 hours ago, Jip99 said:

 

This is also Thailand and you are probably familiar with 'health and safety' practices that bear no resemblance to those in the west.

 

Two family members have just lost their lives and I don't see that being the appropriate time to play the blame game.

Well its tragic for sure.....but something or someone IS to blame.....thats what accident investigators and police do...try to find the why and how.......I think it fair to talk about Thai drivers and the facts that they SPEED<DONT WEAR SEAT BELTS<DONT MAINTAIN THEIR CARS OR TRUCKS and DRINK BOOZE AND TAKE YABBA......tragic for sure in all ways....ill bet it was a combination of things the driver failed to do....most accidents are........

[marko kok prong]

39 minutes ago, Ctkong said:

If you look at the actions of the poor people here ,it seems as though they don’t mind being dead than poor. Maybe they hope to get another shot in their next life . Those driving conditions and lifestyles that promote early exit only reinforce the notion that the poor Thais seems to have a death wish. 

Thank's,at first i thought your post a little agressive,upon re reading it and a big spliff [i have to keep my mind limber to post on tvf] i agree and what's more i love you man.

[Jip99]

29 minutes ago, chanangrak said:

Well its tragic for sure.....but something or someone IS to blame.....thats what accident investigators and police do...try to find the why and how.......I think it fair to talk about Thai drivers and the facts that they SPEED<DONT WEAR SEAT BELTS<DONT MAINTAIN THEIR CARS OR TRUCKS and DRINK BOOZE AND TAKE YABBA......tragic for sure in all ways....ill bet it was a combination of things the driver failed to do....most accidents are........

 

 

I agree with you 100%

 

 

The sad thing is that lessons WON'T be learned, the right actions will not be taken and the right education and training backed up by regulation and enforcement will not happen.

[marko kok prong]

7 hours ago, bamboozled said:

This is utterly and totally heart-wrenching... I cannot imagine the depth of this mans grief. I am brought to tears.

 

I think people posting comments on here about what he should have done to prevent this, and what Thai folks should or shouldn't do, don't perhaps understand the role of poverty in all this. I believe most of the population has very little income. When you are dirt poor, you don't have options. You can say all this guy had to do was control his tires...but when you are poor and you need this job like you need to breathe, you don't go complaining to the boss that the tires on the truck are compromised. You shut your mouth and do the job you were told to do. You learn to shut down critical thinking and not dwell much about your miserable plight. You have to hedge your bets on hope which is all you have. Yes, you should wear your seat belt. But learning that takes education which takes money and free time to study...which takes away time from work. And it goes against the whole survival attitude you have learned that hope will get you through. Perhaps the family was with him because that is their only transport. When you are poor, you cannot afford a car, or motorbike, or extra bus ticket (2!) to send the family back home. Or perhaps their home is so miserable it's more comfortable and less deadening to ride around in the truck. It's too easy to pass judgement not knowing, and not appreciating, the facts of another persons situation.

Damn marvelous post sir,very insightful,there are two sides to every coin.

[shady86]

I don,t know about the rest of you but years ago, when I had very little money, I regularly used to drive my car until the tyres got totally bald and eventually blew out in transit. Never had any serious problem, just slowly braked and changed to the spare. Is it possible that there could have been a different cause of loss of control ?

It's totally different for a 1 ton vehicle and 10 ton truck. Moreover it might be travelling at high speed or going on a bend. Normally blown truck tyres end up with disasters.

[Justgrazing]

2 hours ago, Nyezhov said:

Be that as it may, I feel for the dude, he has to live with what happened. Now y'all feel free to react to this post with plenty of eyerolls, ad hominems and sads becasue Im not joining in the superiority fete.

Nyez' I like a lot of what you put up but feel you've got it wrong with this one mate .. As a few other contributors have already put up there is always a quantifiable reason why something like this happens ..

1 .. truck tyres can " explode " but they only do so for primarily one reason .. Over-inflation and that is something everyone does here from the small ubiquitous motorcycles that are the staple form of transport for many Thai's right up to prime mover units like the one involved in this .. Tyre manufacturer's print a lot of information on the side wall of tyres to advise the best and safest use of a tyre .. Max inflated pressure being one piece of info .. But in all the time I've been here I have never seen a Thai person take the time to read and absorb that info .. they simply inflate the tyre until it is rock hard to the touch ..  Factor in expansion of the air within the tyre through ambient temp , heat transfer to the rim from the brakes ( particularly on big trucks ) and cornering and an over inflated tyre can become dangerously over inflated to the point where it will let go .. with a bang 

2 .. If the seatbelts within the cab had been used by the passengers would they have been catapulted from the cab .? Likely as not .. But therein lies the rub with so many fatalities on the roads here .. Those who die quite often have not utilised the safety equipment that is provided for their protection .. 

As someone who attended the aftermath of fatal R T C's in England ( my wrecker recovery truck would be called upon to remove/tow-away shattered vehicles ) I have seen at first hand that ultimately many of those accidents were preventable and the UK traffic cops with whom I would sometimes have to liaise that attend such incidents were pretty adept at investigating then pinpointing in great detail the cause of such incidents and very rarely would that cause not be attributable to someone either the manner in which vehicles involved were being driven or their condition at the time .. 

None of us on here can possibly imagine what this guy is going through now and as someone who has personally lost 2 members of my family in the last 18 mths ( illness ) my deepest sympathies are with the guy for ever and a day as losing someone very close hurts , it hurts like hell .. So RIP to those who are lost but folk cannot abdicate their responsibilities when something like this happens and it happened for a reason that could have been avoided .. 

Edited December 29, 2018 by Justgrazing
Sp

[bluesofa]

10 hours ago, Justgrazing said:

{snipped}

1 .. truck tyres can " explode " but they only do so for primarily one reason .. Over-inflation and that is something everyone does here from the small ubiquitous motorcycles that are the staple form of transport for many Thai's right up to prime mover units like the one involved in this .. Tyre manufacturer's print a lot of information on the side wall of tyres to advise the best and safest use of a tyre .. Max inflated pressure being one piece of info .. But in all the time I've been here I have never seen a Thai person take the time to read and absorb that info .. they simply inflate the tyre until it is rock hard to the touch ..  Factor in expansion of the air within the tyre through ambient temp , heat transfer to the rim from the brakes ( particularly on big trucks ) and cornering and an over inflated tyre can become dangerously over inflated to the point where it will let go .. with a bang

Justgrazing, I agree 100% with what you've said about the info on the tyre wall, and Thais not even looking at that.

Being a boring git, I have a small laminated card in my wallet with the tyre pressures (front & rear) for the motorbike and the car - it's a handy aide-memoire.

When I've been touring on my bicycle and sometimes dropped into a repair shop to top-up my tyres, the number of times staff have initially refused to pump them up to 70psi, claiming they'll 'explode', as the only pressure they've seen used on cars and motorbikes is usually around 25-40psi and can't get their head around a bicycle having so much more pressure in the tyres.

 

Edited December 30, 2018 by metisdead
Please do not modify someone else's post in your quoted reply, either with font or color changes or wording.

[NanLaew]

11 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Hmm, it's one thing to call them (include me in that) smart-<deleted>, but most of us foreigners recognise cause and effect, and have been brought up to use critical thinking - something which is not common here.

And your point is?

[bluesofa]

19 minutes ago, NanLaew said:

11 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Hmm, it's one thing to call them (include me in that) smart-<deleted>, but most of us foreigners recognise cause and effect, and have been brought up to use critical thinking - something which is not common here.

And your point is?

My point is because the first two poster pointed out basic safety precautions that didn't appear to have been taken, resulting in the the loss of two lives, they were called smart-<deleted>.

 

[Justgrazing]

12 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

Justgrazing, I agree 100% with what you've said about the info on the tyre wall, and Thais not even looking at that.

Being a boring git, I have a small laminated card in my wallet with the tyre pressures (front & rear) for the motorbike and the car - it's a handy aide-memoire.

When I've been touring on my bicycle and sometimes dropped into a repair shop to top-up my tyres, the number of times staff have initially refused to pump them up to 70psi, claiming they'll 'explode', as the only pressure they've seen used on cars and motorbikes is usually around 25-40psi and can't get their head around a bicycle having so much more pressure in the tyres.

 

Indeed Sof' and as I've already alluded to tyre shops here tend to inflate motorcycle tyres in particular until they are rock hard to the squeeze on the principle that said motorbike will be carrying more than one passenger and probably some goods or cargo which in itself imperil's the safe working envelope of a tyre .. A fairly accurate marker of overinflated tyres is the wear pattern will be centralised in the middle of the tread .. And again expansion of the air within the tyre cannot be underestimated .. My cruiser in Blighty is fitted with a tyre pressure readout on the dash .. at the touch of a button it will give the pressure of each individual wheel which the manufacturer recommended's is 32 psi .. Where it's parked outside my house the passenger side is exposed to the sun , during summer months without the car even moving the heat of the big yellow will raise that to 34 sometimes 35 .. take it down the motorway at 70 mph and the pressure will increase to 36 maybe 37 on a hot day and that's just myself in the car and carrying very little or no load .. that represents an increase in pressure of over 10% .. Extrapolate that to a truck tyre that requires a recommended 90 psi and all of a sudden it's close to a 100 psi .. factor in load , cornering , braking and its easy to see how a truck tyre then becomes dangerously overinflated .. One of the reasons racing car tyres ( and now some road cars like the Nissan GTR ) are inflated with Nitrogen gas is that it is less prone to expansion through heat and will maintain a more consistent pressure under operation .. 

[Nyezhov]

4 hours ago, Ctkong said:

Thailand has a two tiered system. Elites and others.

Every country has a two tiered system.

 

4 hours ago, marko kok prong said:

Thank's,at first i thought your post a little agressive,upon re reading it and a big spliff [i have to keep my mind limber to post on tvf] i agree and what's more i love you man.

Thanks for sharing

[Nyezhov]

3 hours ago, Justgrazing said:

Nyez' I like a lot of what you put up but feel you've got it wrong with this one mate .. As a few other contributors have already put up there is always a quantifiable reason why something like this happens ..

1 .. truck tyres can " explode " but they only do so for primarily one reason .. Over-inflation and that is something everyone does here from the small ubiquitous motorcycles that are the staple form of transport for many Thai's right up to prime mover units like the one involved in this .. Tyre manufacturer's print a lot of information on the side wall of tyres to advise the best and safest use of a tyre .. Max inflated pressure being one piece of info .. But in all the time I've been here I have never seen a Thai person take the time to read and absorb that info .. they simply inflate the tyre until it is rock hard to the touch ..  Factor in expansion of the air within the tyre through ambient temp , heat transfer to the rim from the brakes ( particularly on big trucks ) and cornering and an over inflated tyre can become dangerously over inflated to the point where it will let go .. with a bang 

2 .. If the seatbelts within the cab had been used by the passengers would they have been catapulted from the cab .? Likely as not .. But therein lies the rub with so many fatalities on the roads here .. Those who die quite often have not utilised the safety equipment that is provided for their protection .. 

As someone who attended the aftermath of fatal R T C's in England ( my wrecker recovery truck would be called upon to remove/tow-away shattered vehicles ) I have seen at first hand that ultimately many of those accidents were preventable and the UK traffic cops with whom I would sometimes have to liaise that attend such incidents were pretty adept at investigating then pinpointing in great detail the cause of such incidents and very rarely would that cause not be attributable to someone either the manner in which vehicles involved were being driven or their condition at the time .. 

None of us on here can possibly imagine what this guy is going through now and as someone who has personally lost 2 members of my family in the last 18 mths ( illness ) my deepest sympathies are with the guy for ever and a day as losing someone very close hurts , it hurts like hell .. So RIP to those who are lost but folk cannot abdicate their responsibilities when something like this happens and it happened for a reason that could have been avoided .. 

People die all over the world because they are poor or ignorant or stupid or forgetful or dont read directions. What I get annoyed at is the smarmy attitude. 

[Prairieboy]

21 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Wife and baby fall from top of Bhumibol bridge after 100 meter plunge

The headline is a bit confusing - did they plunge 100 metres then fall from the bridge? Thankfully it was made clear in the body of the article.

 

Why does he have his family in the truck with him?  Would this not result in distracted driving?  (Crying baby, yappy wife).

 

A tragic happening to a young family!  RIP young lady and baby!

[hotchilli]

Heartbreaking, we can all be wise after the event... he'll have plenty of time to reflect over his action/in-actions later when he's home alone.

Feel really sorry for the child in the care of adults who should have taken safety a little more seriously.

 

[Cereal]

23 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Hmm, it's one thing to call them (include me in that) smart-<deleted>, but most of us foreigners recognise cause and effect, and have been brought up to use critical thinking - something which is not common here.

That may well go down as the understatement of 2018.

[Burma Bill]

Very sad indeed RIP wife and child. Possible cause - a dreaded re-molded tyre?

[MaxLee]

Did the company who owns the truck, do any safety checks? NO.... 

 

question answered

[saigonsunset]

Every day I see pictures of my wifes friends in their cars on the front passenger seat taking selfies with their toddlers while driving. Needless to say neither mom nor kid are buckled up. It is just beyond comprehention when coming but I suppose some 50 years ago that wasn't all too uncommon in the West too and as always it comes down to education and education is one of the main things a government must provide for its' citizens .... oh nevermind.