Road Safety in Thailand – a summary of Perceptions and Reality

[kwilco]

22 minutes ago, fredwiggy said:

, and countless others here, have, in this and other posts, acknowledged that we already know why accidents happen here, and most of us already knew when we took our first drivers test as a teenager.

apparently not. - there's no such thing as an accident, either

[cdemundo]

I would be interested to hear about what nations have improved their road safety and how they have done it.

That would be more interesting than a series of scoldings.

 

"Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Portugal have reduced road deaths the most since 2010"

https://etsc.eu/this-list-of-countries-making-the-most-progress-on-road-safety-in-europe-might-surprise-you/

 

From the google AI summary: (given in response to the search query)

Road and vehicle design and enforcement of speeding and drunk driving laws have been the causes for improvements.

 

[cdnvic]

Removed posts that ignored my earlier warning, and those quoting them.

[kwilco]

14 hours ago, cdemundo said:

I would be interested to hear about what nations have improved their road safety and how they have done it.

That would be more interesting than a series of scoldings.

 

"Estonia, Greece, Lithuania, Latvia and Portugal have reduced road deaths the most since 2010"

https://etsc.eu/this-list-of-countries-making-the-most-progress-on-road-safety-in-europe-might-surprise-you/

 

From the google AI summary: (given in response to the search query)

Road and vehicle design and enforcement of speeding and drunk driving laws have been the causes for improvements.

 

 

 

What a great question!

 

Here’s the link to the video….

https://youtu.be/gRuWVGvkgJo

Note that nowhere in this video do you hear the expression “bad drivers” -or any links of this to nationality.

 

It highlights a key point: road safety improvements are not exclusive to any one nation or culture.

However, some will still try to argue in terms of race and stereotype that "Thailand is different, and these strategies won’t work here"—which implies an unfair assumption that Thais are incapable of change. History proves otherwise.

 

The Global Road Safety is a universal science

The evolution of road safety follows the history of the car in each country. Key factors include:

Car ownership rates, e.g. the more cars on the road, the greater the potential for accidents. Canges in Society  when countries shift from an agrarian to an industrial society impacts vehicle ownership and traffic.

Many nations with high car ownership have developed their own automotive sectors not least of all Thailand.

 

The U.S. was the first to embrace private car ownership, yet ironically, it has not led the way in road safety. Western Europe followed with its own automobile industry, and as industrialization spread globally, road deaths surged. The way each country responded depended on its government’s policies.

 

To assess road safety, researchers usually prefer deaths per number of vehicles and distance travelled rather than per 100,000 people. For example, the U.S. has high car ownership and long driving distances., yet its crash rate per mile is lower than in some countries with fewer cars. Some African nations have low car ownership, but once someone is in a vehicle, their chances of a crash are alarmingly high much higher than Thaiand.

 

Thailand’s progress….According to the 2023 Global Status Report on Road Safety, Thailand had a road traffic death rate of 25.4 per 100,000 people in 2021.

In the past 40 years, Thailand has been transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial society. It has also developed one of the world's largest motor industries—now ranked in the top 15, surpassing the UK’s.

 

However, many forget that back in the 1960s and 1970s, road deaths in other countries were comparable to Thailand’s are today.

 

So, how Have Other Nations Reduced Road Deaths? - The most successful improvements have been in Northern and Western Europe. Sweden led the way by formalizing years of research into the Safe System Approach—a framework based on the principle that no one should be killed or seriously injured on the roads. The Netherlands quickly followed suit.

From the 1980s onward, industrialized nations saw road deaths peak and then decline as governments introduced safety measures. Different countries had varying levels of success:

France in particular had road deaths similar to Thailand’s today in the early 1970s but successfully reduced them despite less advanced car safety at the time. Let’s not forget the notorious French priority on the right rule – mirrored in Thailand – that led to the terrible French crossroads carnage

The formation of the European Union helped to develop coordinated road safety strategies, precursors to the Safe System, leading to consistent declines in fatalities.

 

The Safe System and the 5 Es

The most effective road safety policies follow the 5 Es:

Education – Public awareness campaigns and driver training.

Enforcement – Strict traffic laws and penalties.

Engineering – Safer roads and vehicle design.

Emergency Response – Faster medical aid to crash victims.

Evaluation – Continuous monitoring and policy adjustments.

 

Nations that fully implemented these principles—including Sweden, the UK, and the Netherlands—have achieved single-digit road deaths per 100,000 people, moving toward Vision Zero (zero road deaths) in some countries.

 

Other countries around the world have also made dramatic improvements by adopting Safe System principles:

South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all saw significant declines once their authorities embraced comprehensive safety policies.

 

However,  the U.S. alone has lagged behind. While the U.S. made progress in the 1970s and 1980s, it never adopted a national road safety policy. Today, it has one of the worst road safety records in the Western world.

 

Road safety improvements don’t come from people suddenly becoming “better drivers.” They result from government-led, data-driven policies. Countries that have successfully reduced road deaths have done so by implementing all aspects of the Safe System, not just selected parts….and not a mention of “bad drivers” anywhere.

If Thailand fully commits to a similar approach, there’s no reason it cannot achieve the same success.

 

[kwilco]

On 2/3/2025 at 1:37 AM, KannikaP said:

Thank you Chat GPT.

so do you agree or disagree?

[kwilco]

Here is a summary of a paper I read recently which basically underlines what I’ve being saying

 

““Their lives don't matter to politicians”: The necropolitical ecology of Thailand's dangerous and unequal roads”

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629823001907

 

Thailand’s high rate of road deaths, is a result of political, economic, and cultural factors  it affects mostly the poorer classes.

 

Here are the 5 Es….

Engineering - Poor road design, the lack of safety measures, (engineering)

Enforcement - Weak enforcement of regulations, (Enforcement)

Education - Insufficient driver education (Education)contribute to the crisis.

Emergency  - Lack of concern leads to slapdash first responder and emergency services - The concept of necropolitical ecology highlights how government inaction and neglect—rather than direct oppression—result in preventable deaths.    

Evaluation - A lack of coordination between agencies working on road safety, poor data collection, widespread corruption, and an ineffective lead agency, have weakened the state’s capacity to address this issue

 

Limited public transport forces people, especially in rural areas, to rely on motorcycles and high-speed vehicles, increasing accident risks. Corruption, fragmented governance, and a lack of political will further weaken state intervention, while the public does not exert pressure on leaders to address the issue.

 

The concept of necropolitical ecology highlights how government inaction and neglect—rather than direct oppression—result in preventable deaths, particularly among marginalized groups. This is a "silent violence”, which deprioritizes safety concerns. Without serious government reforms, and an understanding by the general public for safer roads, these issues will continue. We are looking at road safety in an authoritarian context.

Hopefully the media will learn th basics of road safety and it will change how they report of road incidents and start to give campaigners a voice.

  

 

 

 

[TedG]

This needs a blame pie. 

 

 

[kwilco]

51 minutes ago, TedG said:

This needs a blame pie. 

 

 

you're 50 years out of date - You will never find that in any road safety paper - it is what they have argued against in every successful road safety campaign throughout the world. Do you really think you know something they don't?

[fredwiggy]

On 2/2/2025 at 6:41 AM, kwilco said:

I totally agree that for years Thailand's gathering of stats has been unreliable and incomplete. THe main problem is how the general public iand th media interpret what is available - the WHO is actually quite good at drawing reasonable conclusions from poor stats from countries with similar problems all over the world.

you'd expect stats to cover such things as

Deaths per 1 million inhabitants

Serious Injuries per 1 million inhabitants

Minor injuries per 1 million inhabitants

Deaths per 10 billion vehicle-KM

Deaths per 100,000 registered vehicles

Registered vehicles per 1000 inhabitants

 

we can be pretty sure that 50% of all registered vehicles on Thai roads are 32- wheelers this is a dangerous mix giver road design and the average size and character of private 4-wheelers.

We can also arue quite strongly that you are statistically less likely to die in a 4-wheeler in Thailand than you are in the USA - yet people consistently cite drivers of 4-wheelers as examples of the dangers on Thai raods when it isn't actually the case

 

They also fail to divide injuries into the 3 internationally recognised categories minor, serious and fatal. It is impossible to get a good idea of the number of collisions.

but - as no-one on this site ever seems to even consider any of this it enables people to run wild with totally irrelevant and wildly prejudiced assumptions about road safety in Thailand..

 

To make changes in road safety in Thailand there need to be fundamental changes in many areas. but to even start, you need a good database of stats to analyse and thai doesn't have that - they don't even gave people trained to make proper crash reports., the base-line for road safety is knowing what you're up against.

Half of the registered vehicles in Thailand are motorbikes. Then there are the cars and trucks, which far outnumber 32 or 18 wheelers, so I'm not sure where you get that nonsense, especially seeing you've been doing this for 20 years in Thailand.

 

If there are millions more vehicles on the road, Like the US has, statistically there will be more accidents, so the per capita thing doesn't really apply here.

 

Again, for quite a few times here, people here are not quoting what they see because of prejudice or racist reasons. We see what we see, and if you've driven as much as I and others who were professional drivers, you see much more of what goes on than the regular driver, and what we see here is much more in the way o reckless and incompetent driving than back home. It isn't irrelevant if it's what most of us here are seeing.

 

To make changes here you don't need stats but enforcement of rules that are already on the books and rules that the people should know if they are given a license. Stats are already there, even if they are a bit misleading because the total deaths and injuries that reach the hospitals aren't immediately shown, but they are when the yearly amount comes up, as hospitals have top give records of all injuries to the government. They are ignoring for the most part what goes on here, besides saying they are going to do something to stop this. This has been said for decades. They know exactly what they're up against. A huge amount o\f reckless, careless drivers, lack of enforcement of rules, and roads that need repairing faster. I'm sure there are quite a few members here who understand what you've said, and knew this many years before, but it's you that's still missing the main point of who is responsible for these accidents first and foremost.

[fredwiggy]

On 2/4/2025 at 11:43 PM, kwilco said:

 

 

What a great question!

 

Here’s the link to the video….

https://youtu.be/gRuWVGvkgJo

Note that nowhere in this video do you hear the expression “bad drivers” -or any links of this to nationality.

 

It highlights a key point: road safety improvements are not exclusive to any one nation or culture.

However, some will still try to argue in terms of race and stereotype that "Thailand is different, and these strategies won’t work here"—which implies an unfair assumption that Thais are incapable of change. History proves otherwise.

 

The Global Road Safety is a universal science

The evolution of road safety follows the history of the car in each country. Key factors include:

Car ownership rates, e.g. the more cars on the road, the greater the potential for accidents. Canges in Society  when countries shift from an agrarian to an industrial society impacts vehicle ownership and traffic.

Many nations with high car ownership have developed their own automotive sectors not least of all Thailand.

 

The U.S. was the first to embrace private car ownership, yet ironically, it has not led the way in road safety. Western Europe followed with its own automobile industry, and as industrialization spread globally, road deaths surged. The way each country responded depended on its government’s policies.

 

To assess road safety, researchers usually prefer deaths per number of vehicles and distance travelled rather than per 100,000 people. For example, the U.S. has high car ownership and long driving distances., yet its crash rate per mile is lower than in some countries with fewer cars. Some African nations have low car ownership, but once someone is in a vehicle, their chances of a crash are alarmingly high much higher than Thaiand.

 

Thailand’s progress….According to the 2023 Global Status Report on Road Safety, Thailand had a road traffic death rate of 25.4 per 100,000 people in 2021.

In the past 40 years, Thailand has been transitioning from an agrarian to an industrial society. It has also developed one of the world's largest motor industries—now ranked in the top 15, surpassing the UK’s.

 

However, many forget that back in the 1960s and 1970s, road deaths in other countries were comparable to Thailand’s are today.

 

So, how Have Other Nations Reduced Road Deaths? - The most successful improvements have been in Northern and Western Europe. Sweden led the way by formalizing years of research into the Safe System Approach—a framework based on the principle that no one should be killed or seriously injured on the roads. The Netherlands quickly followed suit.

From the 1980s onward, industrialized nations saw road deaths peak and then decline as governments introduced safety measures. Different countries had varying levels of success:

France in particular had road deaths similar to Thailand’s today in the early 1970s but successfully reduced them despite less advanced car safety at the time. Let’s not forget the notorious French priority on the right rule – mirrored in Thailand – that led to the terrible French crossroads carnage

The formation of the European Union helped to develop coordinated road safety strategies, precursors to the Safe System, leading to consistent declines in fatalities.

 

The Safe System and the 5 Es

The most effective road safety policies follow the 5 Es:

Education – Public awareness campaigns and driver training.

Enforcement – Strict traffic laws and penalties.

Engineering – Safer roads and vehicle design.

Emergency Response – Faster medical aid to crash victims.

Evaluation – Continuous monitoring and policy adjustments.

 

Nations that fully implemented these principles—including Sweden, the UK, and the Netherlands—have achieved single-digit road deaths per 100,000 people, moving toward Vision Zero (zero road deaths) in some countries.

 

Other countries around the world have also made dramatic improvements by adopting Safe System principles:

South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all saw significant declines once their authorities embraced comprehensive safety policies.

 

However,  the U.S. alone has lagged behind. While the U.S. made progress in the 1970s and 1980s, it never adopted a national road safety policy. Today, it has one of the worst road safety records in the Western world.

 

Road safety improvements don’t come from people suddenly becoming “better drivers.” They result from government-led, data-driven policies. Countries that have successfully reduced road deaths have done so by implementing all aspects of the Safe System, not just selected parts….and not a mention of “bad drivers” anywhere.

If Thailand fully commits to a similar approach, there’s no reason it cannot achieve the same success.

 

Countries that have reduced deaths and major accidents have enforced their rules, fining and jailing people. The people they are fining and jailing are breaking the road rules, bad drivers. Not necessarily incompetent but dangerous, to themselves and others. Fixing roads will make driving safer for all drivers, including the bad ones. Bad roads mean one thing, slow down. If you go slow on a bad road, you aren't going to get into an accident. People who are arrogant or incompetent think they can do whatever they want, which makes accidents a lot more likely. Education of drivers is part on the educators shoulders but mostly on the students. If you use an unsafe vehicle, you're taking a risk, which is on you. If the police see this vehicle and know it's unsafe, it's also on them to fix the problem. Good drivers rarely get into accidents, unless they are hit by bad drivers.

[kwilco]

On 2/1/2025 at 11:41 PM, kwilco said:

I totally agree that for years Thailand's gathering of stats has been unreliable and incomplete. THe main problem is how the general public iand th media interpret what is available - the WHO is actually quite good at drawing reasonable conclusions from poor stats from countries with similar problems all over the world.

you'd expect stats to cover such things as

Deaths per 1 million inhabitants

Serious Injuries per 1 million inhabitants

Minor injuries per 1 million inhabitants

Deaths per 10 billion vehicle-KM

Deaths per 100,000 registered vehicles

Registered vehicles per 1000 inhabitants

 

we can be pretty sure that 50% of all registered vehicles on Thai roads are 32- wheelers this is a dangerous mix giver road design and the average size and character of private 4-wheelers.

We can also arue quite strongly that you are statistically less likely to die in a 4-wheeler in Thailand than you are in the USA - yet people consistently cite drivers of 4-wheelers as examples of the dangers on Thai raods when it isn't actually the case

 

They also fail to divide injuries into the 3 internationally recognised categories minor, serious and fatal. It is impossible to get a good idea of the number of collisions.

but - as no-one on this site ever seems to even consider any of this it enables people to run wild with totally irrelevant and wildly prejudiced assumptions about road safety in Thailand..

 

To make changes in road safety in Thailand there need to be fundamental changes in many areas. but to even start, you need a good database of stats to analyse and thai doesn't have that - they don't even gave people trained to make proper crash reports., the base-line for road safety is knowing what you're up against.

Sorry typo - 32 wheelers should read "2 wheelers"!

[kwilco]

9 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Half of the registered vehicles in Thailand are motorbikes. Then there are the cars and trucks, which far outnumber 32 or 18 wheelers, so I'm not sure where you get that nonsense, especially seeing you've been doing this for 20 years in Thailand.

sorry that's a typo - 32 should read 2-wheelers - I"m surpised you dodn't work that out - I expect you did and are just fishing around for something to argue about. Not even sure what you think a "32-wheeler" is?

[kwilco]

10 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Half of the registered vehicles in Thailand are motorbikes. Then there are the cars and trucks, which far outnumber 32 or 18 wheelers, so I'm not sure where you get that nonsense, especially seeing you've been doing this for 20 years in Thailand.

 

If there are millions more vehicles on the road, Like the US has, statistically there will be more accidents, so the per capita thing doesn't really apply here.

 

Again, for quite a few times here, people here are not quoting what they see because of prejudice or racist reasons. We see what we see, and if you've driven as much as I and others who were professional drivers, you see much more of what goes on than the regular driver, and what we see here is much more in the way o reckless and incompetent driving than back home. It isn't irrelevant if it's what most of us here are seeing.

 

To make changes here you don't need stats but enforcement of rules that are already on the books and rules that the people should know if they are given a license. Stats are already there, even if they are a bit misleading because the total deaths and injuries that reach the hospitals aren't immediately shown, but they are when the yearly amount comes up, as hospitals have top give records of all injuries to the government. They are ignoring for the most part what goes on here, besides saying they are going to do something to stop this. This has been said for decades. They know exactly what they're up against. A huge amount o\f reckless, careless drivers, lack of enforcement of rules, and roads that need repairing faster. I'm sure there are quite a few members here who understand what you've said, and knew this many years before, but it's you that's still missing the main point of who is responsible for these accidents first and foremost.

 

10 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Countries that have reduced deaths and major accidents have enforced their rules, fining and jailing people. The people they are fining and jailing are breaking the road rules, bad drivers. Not necessarily incompetent but dangerous, to themselves and others. Fixing roads will make driving safer for all drivers, including the bad ones. Bad roads mean one thing, slow down. If you go slow on a bad road, you aren't going to get into an accident. People who are arrogant or incompetent think they can do whatever they want, which makes accidents a lot more likely. Education of drivers is part on the educators shoulders but mostly on the students. If you use an unsafe vehicle, you're taking a risk, which is on you. If the police see this vehicle and know it's unsafe, it's also on them to fix the problem. Good drivers rarely get into accidents, unless they are hit by bad drivers.

 

Your argument boils down to ‘I see it, so it must be true,’ which is the exact opposite of how road safety is scientifically analysed.

 

Personal anecdotes don’t trump hard data, and dismissing statistics just because they don’t fit your narrative is just wilful ignorance.

 

Claiming ‘per capita stats don’t apply’ is outright nonsense—that’s literally how international road safety is measured.

 

If you don’t grasp that, you’re not in a position to argue about data.

 

And no, ‘just enforcing rules’ isn’t a magic fix. Countries that actually reduce road deaths do so through data-driven policy, not by blaming ‘bad drivers’—a useless, outdated term.

 

At this point, you’re arguing against research, statistics, and decades of road safety science just to cling to personal bias. If you’re not willing to engage with facts, you’re not worth debating.