Alcohol, drugs and driving continue to wreak havoc on Thailand’s roads

[from the home of CC]

alcohol is a drug, trying to lipstick this pig leads to a real ugly farm animal.. 

[Broken Record]

They should have Alcohol testing all the time in Pattaya, I know many Farangs who drink all day then drive cars or ride motorcycles, I told my mate to be careful, he said no problem during the day, they don't check till early hours of the morning .

 

The 2 times i have been breath tested in Pattaya in the past have been 3a.m. and 5a.m., so maybe he has a point.

 

[mike787]

Thai roads = guaranteed to meet your maker...enjoy your time here however short it is.

[Airbagwill]

On 1/1/2020 at 10:34 AM, mike787 said:

Welcome to the Thunderdome.....You WILL be killed when or on a Thai road.  

Just noticed this graph contains wildly inaccurate comment. The 30 day rule is a total myth. Stats are not gathered that way.

 

Furthermore, I'm sure even the most simple observer would realise that when releasing statistics for NY, they are all under 30 days.

However with long term stats both in Thailand and the EU, there is no such thing as a 30 day cut off.

 

Of ccourse to get a more accurate picture one has to look at ALL categories of stats....... this would firstly include the 3 categories of injury. Minor, Serious and fatal.

 

It might help if some people actually availed themselves of the full set rather than drawing erroneous conclusions from half-arsed media misinterpretations

[Airbagwill]

On 1/2/2020 at 6:27 PM, mike787 said:

Thai roads = guaranteed to meet your maker...enjoy your time here however short it is.

If you drive a private 4 wheeled vehicle you are slightly LESS likely to die than in the USA.

[robblok]

Such a great drug alcohol, im amazed how negative Thaivisa posters are about alcohol. Normally when I read topics i see a lot of people complaining about getting caught with alcohol and that they have to drink and drive as there are no options (not drinking is often not an option for people).

 

Happy to see the lot that comments agrees that drinking and driving is not a good thing. Then again its still early the other crowd might still be sleeping ????

[overherebc]

4 hours ago, robblok said:

Such a great drug alcohol, im amazed how negative Thaivisa posters are about alcohol. Normally when I read topics i see a lot of people complaining about getting caught with alcohol and that they have to drink and drive as there are no options (not drinking is often not an option for people).

 

Happy to see the lot that comments agrees that drinking and driving is not a good thing. Then again its still early the other crowd might still be sleeping ????

Or too drunk to text and drive at the same time.

Surely if they have been here for many years they know 6 beers with breakfast is ok and in fact normal.

[overherebc]

True story.

When married back in UK my ex's friend, single mum visited one day with her 6 or 7 years boy ( brat ). Within 5 minutes he was climbing on the back rest of the settee and jumping on the cushion and on to the floor then ran to the door and started swing on the door using the handles. His mother kept repeating stop that or I'll smack you and that's all she did, repeat stop that or I'll smack you and the kid paid no notice.

I lasted 10 minutes before I said if you don't stop him I'll take him outside and chain him with the dog in the yard and my dog will teach him some manners.

She grabbed her brat and left saying she would never visit again and I replied suits me fine.

Anyone see the point of the story?

Edited January 6, 2020 by overherebc

[Artisi]

1 hour ago, overherebc said:

True story.

When married back in UK my ex's friend, single mum visited one day with her 6 or 7 years boy ( brat ). Within 5 minutes he was climbing on the back rest of the settee and jumping on the cushion and on to the floor then ran to the door and started swing on the door using the handles. His mother kept repeating stop that or I'll smack you and that's all she did, repeat stop that or I'll smack you and the kid paid no notice.

I lasted 10 minutes before I said if you don't stop him I'll take him outside and chain him with the dog in the yard and my dog will teach him some manners.

She grabbed her brat and left saying she would never visit again and I replied suits me fine.

Anyone see the point of the story?

Yep, should have filled him with booze, then too p issed to jump around ????

[overherebc]

6 minutes ago, Artisi said:

Yep, should have filled him with booze, then too p issed to jump around ????

Or give him a couple of bars of Ex-Lax chocolate. ????????

[mikebell]

On 1/1/2020 at 9:54 AM, Yadon Toploy said:

Start taking responsibility for your actions you silly children.

Like children they need a stern teacher reminding them daily with sanctions where necessary.  In civilised countries it's called a police force.

[Airbagwill]

20 hours ago, mikebell said:

Like children they need a stern teacher reminding them daily with sanctions where necessary.  In civilised countries it's called a police force.

Your perception of the role of police forces is seriously off target.

There is a secondary misconception as well throughout the world that they are the best placed to be authorities on road safety.

A police force's job is to serve and protect.......they eport and enforce laws....they don't teach, create or make judgements.......... to deal with road safety there is usually a specially trained section. In Thailand training is demonstrably insufficient.

[mikebell]

1 hour ago, Airbagwill said:

Your perception of the role of police forces is seriously off target.

There is a secondary misconception as well throughout the world that they are the best placed to be authorities on road safety.

A police force's job is to serve and protect.......they eport and enforce laws....they don't teach, create or make judgements.......... to deal with road safety there is usually a specially trained section. In Thailand training is demonstrably insufficient.

When I drive in UK, I am cautious as I know speed cameras; police patrols will often discover miscreants. 

I live in Pattaya and NEVER see a police patrol.  I only ever see Bandit stops where licences are ransomed on some pretext or the other. 

I witness four red light runners per change of light; multiple instances of speeding/dangerous driving. 

Chonburi is the 2nd most dangerous province in Thailand.  A proper, active police force would reduce the number of accidents by hitting the driver in the wallet.

 

QED

[Artisi]

24 minutes ago, mikebell said:

When I drive in UK, I am cautious as I know speed cameras; police patrols will often discover miscreants. 

I live in Pattaya and NEVER see a police patrol.  I only ever see Bandit stops where licences are ransomed on some pretext or the other. 

I witness four red light runners per change of light; multiple instances of speeding/dangerous driving. 

Chonburi is the 2nd most dangerous province in Thailand.  A proper, active police force would reduce the number of accidents by hitting the driver in the wallet.

 

QED

Correct, the police making judgements ????

[tominbkk]

On 1/1/2020 at 5:50 PM, transam said:

Think it more to do with police absence.....????

True, whole holiday I stayed in my northern bangkok area, I think I saw cops twice in the 5 days.  Lots and lots of 12-14 year old boys racing around on motorbikes....2-3 per bike, in shorts and tshirts, no helmets, wearing sandals.  Having a lot of sanook.

[transam]

1 hour ago, tominbkk said:

True, whole holiday I stayed in my northern bangkok area, I think I saw cops twice in the 5 days.  Lots and lots of 12-14 year old boys racing around on motorbikes....2-3 per bike, in shorts and tshirts, no helmets, wearing sandals.  Having a lot of sanook.

Where I am you never see a cop, so, folk do what they like....The sad thing is, those who control stuff are scratching their heads wondering why their "bright" ideas are doing nufink........????

[Airbagwill]

3 hours ago, mikebell said:

When I drive in UK, I am cautious as I know speed cameras; police patrols will often discover miscreants. 

I live in Pattaya and NEVER see a police patrol.  I only ever see Bandit stops where licences are ransomed on some pretext or the other. 

I witness four red light runners per change of light; multiple instances of speeding/dangerous driving. 

Chonburi is the 2nd most dangerous province in Thailand.  A proper, active police force would reduce the number of accidents by hitting the driver in the wallet.

 

QED

When you infringe a regulation in the UK, the police REPORT it or it goes through the postal system. If you question this, you can go to court. The police do not pass sentence. They start the process.

In order to do this, the police have  officers who are trained and specialise in road/traffic safety, using calibrated/certified equipment on clearly marked and engineered roads that are devoid as far as possible of obstacles and visibility restrictions.

If/when you DO you have an accident the road environment is designed to minimise the amount of further damage and injury incurred.

Once that has happened the target time for a serious emergency is 8 minutes....you are then taken by trained paramedics to a fully equipped A&E unit where you receive treatment without any concern about your ability to pay. (In UK you dial 999 and there is a central emergency number for ALL services)

 

What drivers in the UK fail to realise is the amount of design that goes into a road just to stop idiots being idiots = the sad part of this is that these drivers, because they don't have many accidents at home, think that they are "great"divers, when the reality is thatchy are simply presented from being idiots by the safe system they drive in.

 

Thailand is devoid of the "Safe System" - adopted by countries like the UK/EU

 

 

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Airbagwill

[Vacuum]

3 hours ago, mikebell said:

I live in Pattaya and NEVER see a police patrol. 

They don't have any in Thailand, they only have roadblocks.

[Airbagwill]

3 hours ago, mikebell said:

Chonburi is the 2nd most dangerous province in Thailand. 

Chonburi is a case in point.

They have traffic cops who drive about in the brown/yellow Hondas but as they have little ofor no training in road safety policing procedures there is little for them to do.

TH\Chonbuir has a huge industrial presence - one of the biggest in Thailand and infrastructure including a road transport system that is intended to cope with it.

however the roads are poor designed and mostly not motorway quality. (Thailand has very little real motorway standard roads) However the roads they have built encourager more traffic, higher speeds and have little design thought given to safety aspects. There is also a high proportion of foreign drivers. The result is they have one of the highest death rates in Thailand.

[clarky cat]

On 12/31/2019 at 10:32 AM, webfact said:

random checks on 1,545 drivers of the coaches and vans transporting holidaymakers over the New Year festival, and found 5 of them had used narcotics.

That’s a shocking statistic, I would have thought it would be in the hundreds or thousands 

[Airbagwill]

14 hours ago, clarky cat said:

That’s a shocking statistic, I would have thought it would be in the hundreds or thousands 

Despite the horror stories, bus and van travel are statistically much safer than bike or even private vehicles.

[impulse]

On 1/2/2020 at 6:13 PM, Airbagwill said:

Just noticed this graph contains wildly inaccurate comment. The 30 day rule is a total myth. Stats are not gathered that way.

 

Furthermore, I'm sure even the most simple observer would realise that when releasing statistics for NY, they are all under 30 days.

However with long term stats both in Thailand and the EU, there is no such thing as a 30 day cut off.

 

Of ccourse to get a more accurate picture one has to look at ALL categories of stats....... this would firstly include the 3 categories of injury. Minor, Serious and fatal.

 

It might help if some people actually availed themselves of the full set rather than drawing erroneous conclusions from half-arsed media misinterpretations

 

Also misses 2 other important factors...  The deaths per km driven (or per registered vehicle since Thailand doesn't seem to publish per km numbers), and the percentage of people consigned to scooters, which in USA and Aus studies are 20-40x as hazardous per km driven as a car.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

 

Have a look at the 4th column- deaths per registered vehicle.  Thailand is nowhere near the top of the heap.  Fun as it is to bash Thai drivers, they don't even come close to the world's worst.  By a factor of 100x.  Take Cambodia for example.  They have about 1/4 the deaths per population, but almost 2x the number of deaths per registered vehicle.  Myanmar is even worse, at 4x the number of deaths per registered vehicle, in spite of losing 1/3 fewer people per capita.  Because so few have vehicles.

 

 

[Airbagwill]

3 hours ago, impulse said:

 

Also misses 2 other important factors...  The deaths per km driven (or per registered vehicle since Thailand doesn't seem to publish per km numbers), and the percentage of people consigned to scooters, which in USA and Aus studies are 20-40x as hazardous per km driven as a car.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

 

Have a look at the 4th column- deaths per registered vehicle.  Thailand is nowhere near the top of the heap.  Fun as it is to bash Thai drivers, they don't even come close to the world's worst.  By a factor of 100x.  Take Cambodia for example.  They have about 1/4 the deaths per population, but almost 2x the number of deaths per registered vehicle.  Myanmar is even worse, at 4x the number of deaths per registered vehicle, in spite of losing 1/3 fewer people per capita.  Because so few have vehicles.

 

 

I've pointed this out before ..... No one on Thaivisa (and the rest of the media) EVER bothers to look or use the full range of stats provided by the WHO.

Even the WHO cannot supply a full set for Thailand as things like annual number of collisions and the 3 grades of injury are simply uncollected in Thailand.

Without a proper picture of what is going on, it is very difficult to address this health and safety problem. The authorities just rely on nape of the neck decisions and their own misconceptions to offer up risible pusillanimous solutions to a problem that is much bigger than any of them appear to imagine.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Airbagwill

[bkk6060]

See this?

And what amazes me is how many now want to make weed legal here just adding to the carnage.

Very stupid idea..

[Airbagwill]

22 hours ago, mikebell said:

live in Pattaya and NEVER see a police patrol

This seems to say more about your own powers of observation and susceptibility to confirmation bias.

There is a traffic police in Pattaya and Chonburi. There seems to be a lack of appropriate trading. They mostly cruise Sukhumvit and the major roads around the industrial areas.

You may not also be aware that most UK police forces limit the daily mileage of their traffic cops to 80 kilometers.

[impulse]

47 minutes ago, bkk6060 said:

See this?

And what amazes me is how many now want to make weed legal here just adding to the carnage.

Very stupid idea..

 

Not so stupid if people pick up a bone instead of a drink.  I've never seen a stoner murder his girlfriend in a fit of rage, or pass out at the wheel.  Drunks?  Happens all the time.

 

[mikebell]

53 minutes ago, Airbagwill said:

There is a traffic police in Pattaya and Chonburi. There seems to be a lack of appropriate trading. They mostly cruise Sukhumvit

Correction - the traffic police gather in gangs of up to twenty mostly at The Ambassador & any other place where there are easy pickings.  I cruise Sukhumvit four times a week (tho' Saturday doesn't count as police don't work weekends) and I have never seen an active police car.

I don't understand what 'active trading' is, unless you are referring to paying ransom on your confiscated licence?  Check out soi 9 cop shop any hour to see the hordes of dangerous drivers being milked.

If these non-existent cops are any good, why is Chonburi the 2nd most dangerous Changwat in Thailand which is the 2nd most dangerous country in the world?

[mikebell]

20 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

There is also a high proportion of foreign drivers. The result is they have one of the highest death rates in Thailand.

Are you saying it's foreign drivers responsible for the road kill in Chonburi?  Do you work for TAT?

I've lived in Bang Saray about 14 years, from memory, I can recall a Russian mother mowed down & killed at The Ambassador; two motorbike drivers wiped out when a coach ran a red light; over TWENTY, mainly school kids, killed when an overloaded baht bus driver quarrelled with his wife.

[mikebell]

20 hours ago, Airbagwill said:

When you infringe a regulation in the UK, the police REPORT it or it goes through the postal system. If you question this, you can go to court. The police do not pass sentence. They start the process.

In order to do this, the police have  officers who are trained and specialise in road/traffic safety, using calibrated/certified equipment on clearly marked and engineered roads that are devoid as far as possible of obstacles and visibility restrictions.

If/when you DO you have an accident the road environment is designed to minimise the amount of further damage and injury incurred.

Once that has happened the target time for a serious emergency is 8 minutes....you are then taken by trained paramedics to a fully equipped A&E unit where you receive treatment without any concern about your ability to pay. (In UK you dial 999 and there is a central emergency number for ALL services)

 

What drivers in the UK fail to realise is the amount of design that goes into a road just to stop idiots being idiots = the sad part of this is that these drivers, because they don't have many accidents at home, think that they are "great"divers, when the reality is thatchy are simply presented from being idiots by the safe system they drive in.

 

Thailand is devoid of the "Safe System" - adopted by countries like the UK/EU

 

 

 

I am familiar with UK police procedures, having lived there for 62 years.  I thought we were discussing the lack of active police in Chonburi whose only duty is to relieve drivers of money on some pretext?

[Airbagwill]

4 hours ago, mikebell said:

Correction - the traffic police gather in gangs of up to twenty mostly at The Ambassador & any other place where there are easy pickings.  I cruise Sukhumvit four times a week (tho' Saturday doesn't count as police don't work weekends) and I have never seen an active police car.

I don't understand what 'active trading' is, unless you are referring to paying ransom on your confiscated licence?  Check out soi 9 cop shop any hour to see the hordes of dangerous drivers being milked.

If these non-existent cops are any good, why is Chonburi the 2nd most dangerous Changwat in Thailand which is the 2nd most dangerous country in the world?

I'm surprised you don't understand that citing your limited personal experience has very little value.