South Africa now the most dangerous county for driving. 2nd is Thailand, 3rd is USA

[Thunglom]

 

According to Zubota - the driviing training organisation, South Africa is the worst country to drive in as expected Thailand is number 2 but the USA is number 3.

 

 

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/the-worlds-safest-most-dangerous-countries-to-drive/south-africa/slideshow/81589422.cms

[Sparktrader]

China be no 1. Never seen them drive well.

[setbkk]

<deleted> survey.

[The Hammer2021]

I simply don't  believe  this true. Saudi is far more dangerous and Libya I suspect  also...maybe Kuwait but no way is Thailand more dangerous  than Saudi.

[KhaoYai]

The US is probably up there because of people being shot in their cars ????.

[Thunglom]

The point is for me, it shows how perceptions and personal experience - i.e. anecdotal evidence are so misleading.

This survey uses different criteria to others.

But looking at the statistics is also a science of variables

one thing is the kind of stats people look at - the most unquestioningly used figure is DEATHS per 100k. This doesn't reflect collision frequency, or injuries. However, the statistic that hardly anyone looks at on ASEANOW is deaths per 100k VEHICLES - this reflects better your chances of injury or death if you get into or onto a vehicle. These are the stats mostly used in the USA.

If you look at deaths per 100k pop in 4-wheeled vehicles Thailand is slightly safer then the USA.

If you look at deaths per 100k vehicles then USA fares better

But one thing regardless of which stats you look at the USA has nothing to crow about when it comes to national road safety figures.

As shown here and elsewhere Europe is leagues ahead of the lot.

[Thunglom]

47 minutes ago, The Hammer2021 said:

I simply don't  believe  this true. Saudi is far more dangerous and Libya I suspect  also...maybe Kuwait but no way is Thailand more dangerous  than Saudi.

Depends on how they re shot.....but but of the causes and factors in RTIs is the same worldwide - factors such as speed, drink, the one single CAUSE is human error - NOT reckless driving.

[The Hammer2021]

18 minutes ago, Thunglom said:

Depends on how they re shot.....but but of the causes and factors in RTIs is the same worldwide - factors such as speed, drink, the one single CAUSE is human error - NOT reckless driving.

Have you lived in Saudi? No. Because  if you had you wouldn't  be talking theoretical nonesense - shot?...I'm talking  real life, real experience.  I'll go further Thailand is a very safe place to drive in reality much safe than many places in MENA, south America  etc etc

[Thunglom]

1 hour ago, The Hammer2021 said:

Have you lived in Saudi? No. Because  if you had you wouldn't  be talking theoretical nonesense - shot?...I'm talking  real life, real experience.  I'll go further Thailand is a very safe place to drive in reality much safe than many places in MENA, south America  etc etc

Your arguments are all over the place - we are talking road safety. If you don't like a theory then you need to put up an argument against tat theory.

However you just decide to shift goalposts or cheery pick to attempt to back up an unsupportable hypothesis - not even a theory.

[Kinnock]

The ranking looks to be based on a range of scored criteria including legal blood alcohol limits and max speed limits ..... but these may be spurious measures depending on the level of enforcement and cultural tendency to comply.

 

A higher alcohol limit that is strictly enforced (e.g UK) would be better than a lower limit with little enforcement.  And actual road accident desths is only one of several measures.  Also, deaths per capita is of little use if half the population can't afford a car or motorcycle (India, Bangladesh).

 

So not a valid study in my view, and anyone who has driven in India, Saudi Arabia or Mexico will know what dangerous roads look like.

[Pmbkk]

 

I used to have a team of consultants working for me.

 

One Irish guy was desperate for a posting to Jo-burg.

 

I sorted one out - a few days after he got there he phoned me up in a panic. Someone had put a few bullets in his hire car as he was driving through a park. He wanted out asap - I told him to go back to the hotel, go to the airport and get on the next flight to LHR.

 

My best mate's brother runs gold mines ( his wife is SA ) lives in a huge house which each area gets locked down as they go to bed - security guards outside. He used to come over to get Oxon  graduates. One trip his driver dropped him off at the airport and he was shot on the way back to his house.

 

When I did a bit of consultancy there, I didn't think the driving was anywhere near as bad as Thailand - but the risks were greater. ????

 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2022 by Pmbkk

[Thunglom]

1 hour ago, Kinnock said:

The ranking looks to be based on a range of scored criteria including legal blood alcohol limits and max speed limits ..... but these may be spurious measures depending on the level of enforcement and cultural tendency to comply.

 

A higher alcohol limit that is strictly enforced (e.g UK) would be better than a lower limit with little enforcement.  And actual road accident desths is only one of several measures.  Also, deaths per capita is of little use if half the population can't afford a car or motorcycle (India, Bangladesh).

 

So not a valid study in my view, and anyone who has driven in India, Saudi Arabia or Mexico will know what dangerous roads look like.

death per capita is the statistic most frequently used by the media in Thailand and on this site.

[Thunglom]

51 minutes ago, Pmbkk said:

 

I used to have a team of consultants working for me.

 

One Irish guy was desperate for a posting to Jo-burg.

 

I sorted one out - a few days after he got there he phoned me up in a panic. Someone had put a few bullets in his hire car as he was driving through a park. He wanted out asap - I told him to go back to the hotel, go to the airport and get on the next flight to LHR.

 

My best mate's brother runs gold mines ( his wife is SA ) lives in a huge house which each area gets locked down as they go to bed - security guards outside. He used to come over to get Oxon  graduates. One trip his driver dropped him off at the airport and he was shot on the way back to his house.

 

When I did a bit of consultancy there, I didn't think the driving was anywhere near as bad as Thailand - but the risks were greater. ????

 

 

 

Here are the 8 leading causes of road crashes in S.A.

1. Distractions

2. Drunk driving

3. Speeding

4. Reckless driving

5. J-walking

6. Weather

7. Poor road conditions

8. Vehicle faults

 

Shooting doesn't figure on the list

Note too, that Thailand has VERY liberal gun laws and many motorists are armed. About one in ten people in Thailand legally own a gun. If you include illicit firearms, the number is around 10,300,000, = 15.1 % have a gun. This is over ten times any neighbouring country

Edited May 14, 2022 by Thunglom

[Liverpool Lou]

11 hours ago, setbkk said:

<deleted> survey.

Are you American?

[Liverpool Lou]

Funny how so many posters see the US in third place and, without any reasoned justification, decide that the survey is a crappy one!

Edited May 15, 2022 by Liverpool Lou

[Kinnock]

7 hours ago, Thunglom said:

death per capita is the statistic most frequently used by the media in Thailand and on this site.

Ah, OK - must be a valid measure then ????????????

[RichardColeman]

11 hours ago, Sparktrader said:

China be no 1. Never seen them drive well.

Could be. Lap noi or dodgy brakes could well wipe out about 300 cyclists a time.

 

As for Thailand dropping to 3rd, does South Africa exclude those that die in hospital later to make the figure look better ? 

[placeholder]

31 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Funny how so many posters see the US in third place and, without any reasoned justification, decide that the survey is a crappy one!

Actually, Kinnock gave a very good and reasoned explanation of why the study is invalid. 

[Doctor Tom]

12 hours ago, Thunglom said:

According to Zubota

Yes, quite.  Google is full of these types of so called studies and most of them have Thailand about number 5 or 6, after most of Africa . If you take out teenage motorbike deaths that falls substantially. Personally, I find driving here only slightly more terrifying than driving in Kent in the UK, where people should know better. 

[itsari]

32 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Funny how so many posters see the US in third place and, without any reasoned justification, decide that the survey is a crappy one!

I find the survey unbelievable as I have driven in many states in the US and I am not American . 

Driven in Thailand many years and my own survey tells me the average driver in Thailand is far worse than my experience in the US 

 

[Kinnock]

1 hour ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Funny how so many posters see the US in third place and, without any reasoned justification, decide that the survey is a crappy one!

How's this for a reasoned justification .....

 

One measure was deaths per capita.

 

Motor vehicle ownership per 1000 people: (World Bank Data)

 

USA 816

Thailand 281

India 44

 

Clearly a driver training organisation will want to make their markets look the most dangerous.

 

And roads in India and Thailand must be many, many times more risky than US to be so high in the ranking.

 

Then let's take another 'measure' from the survey - blood alcohol level.  Surely the % of people driving drunk is the real measure, not the legally specified limit?  And I bet Russia or even Thailand would be near the top in this measure.

 

And the UK was equal to US ..... it's nearly impossible to drive anywhere in the UK without being fined for a safety violation.

 

This 'survey' has zero credibility, it is just classic marketing through the media.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Kinnock

[VocalNeal]

12 hours ago, Thunglom said:

The point is for me,

The point is for me that Thailand is not as bad, for expats, on the actual roads as netzines seem to believe. From the new survey Thailand should be compared to its statistical neighbors and not to some mystical western country that AN posters remember fondly. 

[spidermike007]

Something sounds fishy about these numbers. Sometimes you just have to use your eyes and your instincts. When driving in the US, I can go days and days without seeing an accident. People drive infinitely more carefully there, and the highway patrol actually pulls people over for reckless driving and doing incredibly stupid things on the highway.

 

Here, I can't go a few hours without seeing an overturned truck, a motorbike smashed to bits, or a pickup truck who drove onto the median and crashed. Those numbers are ridiculous, and do not reflect reality, at all. 

 

 

[mvdf]

Friends and I went on a road trip from Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) to Nelspruit (now Mbombela) in 2009. Some lebensmüde dolt was overtaking in a no-overtaking lane just after East London. Thanking my lucky stars I'm still here.

[Thunglom]

3 hours ago, Kinnock said:

Ah, OK - must be a valid measure then ????????????

That language would indicate you don't understand the way statistics ae used or misused.

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Thunglom

[Thunglom]

1 hour ago, spidermike007 said:

Something sounds fishy about these numbers. Sometimes you just have to use your eyes and your instincts. When driving in the US, I can go days and days without seeing an accident. People drive infinitely more carefully there, and the highway patrol actually pulls people over for reckless driving and doing incredibly stupid things on the highway.

 

Here, I can't go a few hours without seeing an overturned truck, a motorbike smashed to bits, or a pickup truck who drove onto the median and crashed. Those numbers are ridiculous, and do not reflect reality, at all. 

 

 

this is a case of perception - confirmation bias over evidence.

[Thunglom]

1 hour ago, VocalNeal said:

The point is for me that Thailand is not as bad, for expats, on the actual roads as netzines seem to believe. From the new survey Thailand should be compared to its statistical neighbors and not to some mystical western country that AN posters remember fondly. 

The problem is that the media only looks at one statistic - deaths per 100k pop. This has led to a distorted picture of what is happening on Thai roads. The death rate IS unacceptable, but until people get a realistic picture of WHY this is happening rather than obsessing with the "blame game' then nothing will ever change. The hard evidence for this is that nothing has changed for nearly 3 decades.

[Thunglom]

3 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Funny how so many posters see the US in third place and, without any reasoned justification, decide that the survey is a crappy one!

If you look at any statistics about road safety in the USA, it performs very badly.. , especially when compared to Europe.

as said based on death rate per 100k pop, you are more likely to die in a 4-wheeled vehicle in the USA than you are in Thailand.

[spidermike007]

18 minutes ago, Thunglom said:

this is a case of perception - confirmation bias over evidence.

If you consider one potentially biased and flawed study to be evidence, I can offer you a highly discounted deal on the Brooklyn Bridge. 

 

Sometimes intuition, what we see all around us, and "confirmation bias" is infinitely more accurate that a flawed study.

 

Besides, being a non conformist and a non lemming leads me to distrust and question alot of what I hear and read. 

Edited May 15, 2022 by spidermike007

[Kinnock]

1 hour ago, Thunglom said:

That language would indicate you don't understand the way statistics ae used or misused.

 

When you're in a hole, stop digging.