Video: Two on "big bike" injured at Pattaya U-turn blackspot

 

Thai caption: U-turn car cuts in front

 

Footage from a helmet cam (lasting about one minute) showed the moment when a motorcycle collided with a car making a U-turn on Sukhumvit Road in Pattaya around 10 pm on Sunday night. 

 

A Sawang Boriboon rescue official said on the video that two people - a man and a woman - were seriously injured. The man had arm injuries and the woman was unconscious. 

 

He said the bike was a CB(R) 650 known as a "big bike" in Thailand due to a fairly large engine capacity.

 

77kaoded reported that the couple were taken to hospital in Pattaya then transferred to Sri Racha where they remained under the care of medical staff. 

 

They said it happened at a blackspot where there were frequent accidents and suggested in their report that people should take care on the roads especially with New Year coming up. 

 

Source: 77kaoded

 

 

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WARNING: Some scenes in the video may be disturbing for some viewers. Discretion is advised

 
 

Do my eyes deceive me, or from the helmetcam footage doesn't the bike appear to be travelling at 140Km/Hr?

4 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

appear to be travelling at 140Km/Hr?

The speedo got up to 144 KPH  but I think it was a bit slower when he actually hit the car...Still too fast on a road

(yes its a four lane race track) that runs straight through a very busy town..the U-turns are deadly, badly sign posted,badly lit,poorly designed, views blocked by tress etc.

The (poorly positioned?) helmet cam seems to be pointed down at the speedo and the road surface directly in front of the bike rather than looking further ahead down the road. 

I wonder if the rider was also staring at the speedometer and not looking where they actually should have been? 

 

That is a Kawasaki Z900 not a Honda CBR650

Driving too fast and not observing the road ahead....happens every day here....

Rubbish camera angle, which is actually quite common on these cams. Bad riding skills most likely cause, he should know U-turn is a risky area

28 minutes ago, PremiumLane said:

That is a Kawasaki Z900 not a Honda CBR650

I always wonder why they bother to write the model when most of the time they are wrong. Not just the specific model but the brand itself which should be plain obvious. And it doesn't even serve any purpose. A scooter going 100kph would have the same accident in that situation.

 

When a car suddenly pulls out from the side and you are traveling at 80kph+ then things can get dangerous as the stopping distance is probably more than 60m.

 

Whenever I see cars on the side of the road that want to pull out, I slow down and get ready for breaking or evasive manuevers. Way too many times have they pulled into the road right in front of me. Even if after me there was nobody and they didn't seem in a rush. They are just terrible drivers. Of course that isn't limited to cars either.

1 hour ago, Dmaxdan said:

The (poorly positioned?) helmet cam seems to be pointed down at the speedo and the road surface directly in front of the bike rather than looking further ahead down the road. 

I wonder if the rider was also staring at the speedometer and not looking where they actually should have been? 

 

Pointed down deliberately I would think so he could brag to his mates later about how fast he was riding.

 

Got plenty to brag about now hasn't he. Like 'look how stupid I was!'

50 minutes ago, PremiumLane said:

That is a Kawasaki Z900 not a Honda CBR650

The owner should be lucky that it wasn't the original Z900.

i had a red plated MERC do a U turn right in front of me (6 point turn) on beach road Jomtien, dont know how the hell i missed him, it was the old *do you know who i am thingy* he could have gone down to the next soi and turned, but no this a hole decided he was going to u turn in a narrow section with cars both sides of the road,  Duh !!

Unfortunately too many motorcycle riders "think" cars have to stay in their lane and if they change the lane they should expect a motorcycle with high speed approaching.

Wrong!

 

Obviously car drivers should look in their mirrors and they should indicate early that they intend to change the lane. But nobody can really blame a car driver if he does not think that that little white point in his mirror could be a high speed bike.

14 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Unfortunately too many motorcycle riders "think" cars have to stay in their lane and if they change the lane they should expect a motorcycle with high speed approaching.

Wrong!

 

Obviously car drivers should look in their mirrors and they should indicate early that they intend to change the lane. But nobody can really blame a car driver if he does not think that that little white point in his mirror could be a high speed bike.

The car in this case was not just switching lanes. It cut across several lanes from the left side of the road to get to the u-turn on the right side. Check the video. While I think the motorbike rider was going a bit too fast (not crazy fast, 120kph), the car was clearly wrong to do what it did.

the bike is going 90 miles an hour!

he is riding very aggressively and at that speed you have no options. everything happens too fast. 

and the driver of the car is looking back and thinking the road is clear because they are not realizing a unguided missile is approaching.

 

Brum brum zoom zoom splat aghah fool ???? 

this video is a good example of how not to ride a motorcycle.

it is unfortunately exactly how young Thai males ride their motorcycles. Ultra aggressive, splitting lanes, unnecessary dangerous fast acceleration.

 

and to do this with a passenger is criminal.

   

6 minutes ago, eisfeld said:

The car in this case was not just switching lanes. It cut across several lanes from the left side of the road to get to the u-turn on the right side. Check the video. While I think the motorbike rider was going a bit too fast (not crazy fast, 120kph), the car was clearly wrong to do what it did.

Sure, the car driver was wrong. And so was the motorcycle rider.

 

If the car driver would have looked into his mirror let say 10 seconds ago, what would he have seen?

 

And for the biker: The car won't be able to make a U turn with high speed. This means the car was already driving slow or it was braking to reduce speed. Any of this should have alerted a rider, if he was looking straight ahead, that he should be aware of any stupid actions of that car.

I don't know about this U turn but I saw on many U turns that there are clear warnings normally more than once before the actual U-turn. That fact together with the slow and maybe braking car should have switched on all the alarm bells of that rider.

 

Because blaming the car driver is not really helpful if you are in the hospital or dead. Looking ahead is a lot better and safer.

if you want to know what it was like for the girl at that speed, watch this video if you dare.

 

 

2 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

but I saw on many U turns that there are clear warnings

At many U-turns there are no or inadequate signs..sometimes just a yellow or Thai flag waving obscured by trees

there is also lot of "visual clutter" shop signs, advertising hoardings,rubbish,stray dogs,food vendors,underage kids,over age grannies,sand,potholes,sinkholes,vehicles with no lights, wrong way drivers etc to overload the brain..

That particular stretch of Sukhumvit is between the tunnel and South Pattaya road its a fast 4 lane (each way) race track

even when they ( constantly ) dig it up for the newest reason.????

4 minutes ago, johng said:

At many U-turns there are no or inadequate signs..sometimes just a yellow or Thai flag waving obscured by trees

there is also lot of "visual clutter" shop signs, advertising hoardings,rubbish,stray dogs,food vendors,underage kids,over age grannies,sand,potholes,sinkholes,vehicles with no lights, wrong way drivers etc to overload the brain..

And what do we do when we know there is also lot of "visual clutter" shop signs, advertising hoardings,rubbish,stray dogs,food vendors,underage kids,over age grannies,sand,potholes,sinkholes,vehicles with no lights, wrong way drivers etc?

 

Riding with high speed in such an area is definitely a very stupid idea.

4 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Riding with high speed in such an area is definitely a very stupid idea

Like I said earlier  its a wide 4 lane "motorway"  the traffic is often fast, the U-turns are often badly signed..if you are unfamiliar with the road  its easy to be "caught out"  but yes the bike  was going too fast..we can't really see from the video is what the car did...making a u-turn from the left lane cutting straight across the other 3 lanes is pretty stupid too.

21 minutes ago, NCC1701A said:

if you want to know what it was like for the girl at that speed

Deadly by the looks of it !!!

Let me guess, the fool was probably wearing flip flops.  It's called natural selection.

 

Four Russians also with a few scrapes on Phra Tamnak Hill today. Two separate incidents in quick succession. They refused hospital treatment, as not covered by insurance for motorbike riding.

One with a possibly dislocated arm.

The speed that thrills is also the speed that kills.

 

3 hours ago, Dmaxdan said:

The (poorly positioned?) helmet cam seems to be pointed down at the speedo and the road surface directly in front of the bike rather than looking further ahead down the road. 

I wonder if the rider was also staring at the speedometer and not looking where they actually should have been? 

 

Yes i think so.

12 minutes ago, denishuahin said:

Yes i think so.

Nonsense. He wouldn't be able to ride with his head tilted down like that. It's the camera only. But that's not a good sign if he tilted the camera at this angle. It shows the intention of capturing the speedo instead of what's ahead.

2 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Sure, the car driver was wrong. And so was the motorcycle rider.

 

If the car driver would have looked into his mirror let say 10 seconds ago, what would he have seen?

 

And for the biker: The car won't be able to make a U turn with high speed. This means the car was already driving slow or it was braking to reduce speed. Any of this should have alerted a rider, if he was looking straight ahead, that he should be aware of any stupid actions of that car.

I don't know about this U turn but I saw on many U turns that there are clear warnings normally more than once before the actual U-turn. That fact together with the slow and maybe braking car should have switched on all the alarm bells of that rider.

 

Because blaming the car driver is not really helpful if you are in the hospital or dead. Looking ahead is a lot better and safer.

I also think both were wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not excusing the bike rider.

 

I think the car was nearly stationary, not going at slow speed. I've seen this too many times where some vehicle will be stationary at the far left of the road, waiting for the right moment to cross the road across all lanes instead of previously switching to the right lane to make the u-turn. Many even just enter the road at that spot, coming from some soi, house, parking lot etc. The real experts will even ride/drive a bit in the wrong direction to get to the u-turn ???? They should first drive on the left side and one by one switch lanes to the right and then make the u-turn at the next location but they see a u-turn 50m away from them so they obviously need to take that one...

No doubt the bike was going way too fast. Had he been going slower he would have had more time to react.

(Note: I am not an "accident investigator" but have investigated accidents - in the military - where I was also a Driver-Instructor and Defensive Driving Instructor, all of which means about squat now !)
 

That particular U-Turn doesn't appear to be signed. About 100 meters before it, the U-Turn lane starts to widen into a full lane and by the time you are at that turn Sukhumivit is literally 5 lanes wide.
At the 23 second mark of the video, just before the collision, there appears to be a vehicle in the upper-right corner of the video, in the U-turn lane. The white car is cutting directly across from the left (second lane or even the far left lane). It is in the middle of the middle lane and appears to have hit it's brakes in the middle of the road.
  

This is not unusual, even though it is illegal and highly dangerous. Vehicles will cut directly across from the far left to the far right in a heartbeat, often starting their turn before even thinking about checking if it's safe. I think a lot of them expect that anyone else on the road will simply give them the right-of-way regardless of how close they are or how fast they are going.
I had an accident in Sisaket a couple years ago when an ancient old fart on a scooter was riding on the shoulder on the left side of the road and just as I was getting close to him he cuts into my lane. I move over and he cuts in front of me again. I try to move over further, almost into the oncoming lane and a couple meters before I would have passed him he abruptly turns right and stops ! Right frikken in front of me ! Never once looked in his mirror or signalled or had any idea that there was anyone else on the road at all !
(Apparently no license, registration or insurance either but those things don't matter if the other guy (me) has Class 1 insurance it seems.)

I suspect the car driver may have come from the little soi a hundred meters before the U-turn, that connects to the railway bypass road. He/she probably wanted to head north on Sukhumvit and if they didn't take that U-Turn they'd have to go to the next one near the Pattaya Tai intersection.
He probably saw a gap in traffic that was more than 3 or 4 meters and decided to just force his way across and when he realized someone was coming at high speed he hit the brakes.
Maybe the bike guy was expecting the car to keep going across the highway. As it seems he hit the car in the rear, it's possible that he thought the car would keep going and when it hit the brakes instead there was no time to react and go around him.

Again - he was driving way too fast.

Wondering why they decided to take the injured from Pattaya to Sri Racha though. You'd think the Bangkok-Pattaya hospital (where they were taken first it seems) could handle something like this.

6 hours ago, bluesofa said:

Do my eyes deceive me, or from the helmetcam footage doesn't the bike appear to be travelling at 140Km/Hr?

Exactly... and there isn't any where in Pattaya on Sukhumvit where he should be doing that sort of speed. I had reason to be riding the bike home on Sukhumvit myself last night, (something I avoid as it is dodgy). Lots of racing bikes, one or two big  ones. Mostly kids on smaller machines without helmets.