The occurrence of accidents is actually low, from an empirical viewpoint. I don't see that many, maybe 3-4 per month on average, and I drive/ride daily. While that's definitely more than what I see in France, it's not that much either… IMO because the Thais have their own informal highway code, understood and followed by everyone, which works 99% of the time. In fact, it can sometimes be foreigners who are dangerous, because our Western reflexes and 'road philosophy' are so counterintuitive to the average Thai. It happened to me just earlier this evening: I stopped my motorbike at a pedestrian crossing as a foreigner was waiting to cross. As always in these situations, I put the hazard lights on and watched my rearview mirror attentively. I am always wary of these contexts, because you never know if the vehicles behind you are going to follow your example and stop too, or double down and go through anyway, which creates a much more dangerous situation than the initial one, especially as your stopping can encourage the pedestrian to cross (when they initially didn't intend to) and be struck like a bowling pin. A car and a motorbike came crashing past me: the motorbike, which was initially in my lane, overtook me and avoided me by 10 cm max, honking their horn. Neither vehicle even considered braking and both Thais driving them probably wondered what the stupid farang 'mai roo ruang' ('doesn't have a clue') was up to. I made the wrong call on this one, there could have been an accident and I am the one who would have caused it. The foreigner crossed the road, gave me a thumbs up and I nodded back, but the truth is I shouldn't have stopped – it's a tricky call to make.
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