Road Safety in Thailand – a summary of Perceptions and Reality

[kwilco]

8 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

You keep assuming what others do or don't know, and that's your fail. All the data I, or anyone needs, is the stats yearly on accidents and deaths here, and again what you're still missing. It's on the drivers themselves to understand the laws as they receive their driver licenses. They do know the laws and the one example I gave was seeing a parent driving a scooter while there are 4 others on the scooter without helmets, two offenses.

 

Driving recklessly on any roads in any weather conditions is something anyone older than a teenager should know to avoid, or they shouldn't have a license in the first place.

 

I actually do care about road safety. I'm a good driver, who's a safe driver, and I taught my children the same, along with my ex wife and now girlfriend.

 

What I implied asking if you're Thai is that you seem to be sticking up for the drivers here, saying it's more the fault of bad roads, lack of enforcement, bad infrastructure etc, instead of the drivers themselves, so I asked if you were Thai, as a local would be more likely to stick up for them than another. I don't miss anything. You are. I, and probably everyone else here, as seen by their comments, do understand what makes accidents happen, and how they can be avoided. There is  an attitude here, and it doesn't just encompass driving, and It seems you don't understand ,much about it, although you claim to be here over 20 years.

 

The difference between us is that you're a close minded individual, that looks at data instead of the whole picture, and are still missing the main point. Drivers are the ones responsible for the safety of themselves and others around them. When I say many drivers here are bad, it means a large percentage, and that can be seen daily on the roads, and if you see it for over 6 years, it adds up to quite a few. Add to this many others observations and comments matching mine, and that ups the percentage higher. It doesn't matter what percentage it actually is. What matters is it's a lot more than any other places I and many others have seen driving over 50 years. I also, along with everyone else who's commented. have discussed solutions, and it's been seen on this forum ever since I joined. You keep missing that point also. Give it a rest. You aren't saying anything we already didn't know.

 

Trying to have a discussion with you is like playing chess with a pigeon...

 

As ever. your response is full of logical fallacies, anecdotal reasoning, and contradictions.

 

“All the data I, or anyone, needs is the yearly accident stats.” - ”OMG! - That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. As I said before raw accident numbers don’t explain why crashes happen or how to fix them. Professionals analyse factors like enforcement, infrastructure, driver training, and cultural attitudes—not just body counts. It also helps if you know how and where stats are collated.

 

“Drivers know the laws, they just ignore them.” - “drivers” - what do you mean by that? - Another racist stereotype? - If laws aren’t enforced, why would people follow them? We know this from many countries that lack of enforcement breeds negligence and this is why countries with have proper enforcement systems - just suggesting the police “do their job” - is facile in the extreme.. As ever your blaming of individuals without addressing systemic failures is both naive and counterproductive.

 

“I saw a parent with four people on a scooter without helmets.”
Yes, we’ve all seen that. But anecdote isn’t data and actually shows a huge misunderstanding of the future surrounding the rich and poor in road safety - see the post by “Lorry”. If individual observations were the gold standard for understanding road safety, we wouldn’t need actual studies to assess risk factors and solutions. But one thing that is self-evident is that countries that base their safety programs on data show great improvements wheat in Thailand where “alternative” anecdotal methods have shown no significant change in 30 years.

 

“Anyone older than a teenager should know to avoid reckless driving.”
That’s wishful thinking. People don’t behave based on what they ‘should’ do, they behave based on what’s allowed. That’s why better driver training, licensing exams, and strict enforcement matter—not just personal responsibility. - but you have shown over and over again you don’t understand what “human error” is.

 

“Are you Thai?”
This Such a weak, irrelevant deflection. Road safety isn’t about race or nationality; it’s a universal science about policies, enforcement, and infrastructure. If someone disagrees with your opinion, it doesn’t mean they’re “sticking up” for anyone—it means your argument is just not an argument.

 

“It doesn’t matter what percentage it actually is.”
This single line DESTROYS YOUR ENTIRE CREDIBILITY. If you don’t care about actual data, then you’re not arguing in good faith. You’re just pushing a narrative based on personal bias.

 

“I, and many others, have driven for years and see it daily.”
You still haven’t grasped that That’s just confirmation bias. The fact that multiple people have the same subjective experience doesn’t make it objective truth. If that were the case, science and statistics wouldn’t exist

 

“You are close-minded for looking at data instead of the whole picture.”
No—ignoring data is close-minded. The whole picture includes actual research, not just gut feelings. Again you don’t understand cognitive dissonance either.

 

Final thought? You’re arguing based on personal frustration, not actual analysis. If you want real change, you need facts, not emotional anecdotes.

 

PS - "playing chess with a pigeon" —no matter how well you play, they'll just knock over the pieces, poop on the board, and strut around like they won.

[fredwiggy]

2 hours ago, kwilco said:

 

Trying to have a discussion with you is like playing chess with a pigeon...

 

As ever. your response is full of logical fallacies, anecdotal reasoning, and contradictions.

 

“All the data I, or anyone, needs is the yearly accident stats.” - ”OMG! - That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. As I said before raw accident numbers don’t explain why crashes happen or how to fix them. Professionals analyse factors like enforcement, infrastructure, driver training, and cultural attitudes—not just body counts. It also helps if you know how and where stats are collated.

 

“Drivers know the laws, they just ignore them.” - “drivers” - what do you mean by that? - Another racist stereotype? - If laws aren’t enforced, why would people follow them? We know this from many countries that lack of enforcement breeds negligence and this is why countries with have proper enforcement systems - just suggesting the police “do their job” - is facile in the extreme.. As ever your blaming of individuals without addressing systemic failures is both naive and counterproductive.

 

“I saw a parent with four people on a scooter without helmets.”
Yes, we’ve all seen that. But anecdote isn’t data and actually shows a huge misunderstanding of the future surrounding the rich and poor in road safety - see the post by “Lorry”. If individual observations were the gold standard for understanding road safety, we wouldn’t need actual studies to assess risk factors and solutions. But one thing that is self-evident is that countries that base their safety programs on data show great improvements wheat in Thailand where “alternative” anecdotal methods have shown no significant change in 30 years.

 

“Anyone older than a teenager should know to avoid reckless driving.”
That’s wishful thinking. People don’t behave based on what they ‘should’ do, they behave based on what’s allowed. That’s why better driver training, licensing exams, and strict enforcement matter—not just personal responsibility. - but you have shown over and over again you don’t understand what “human error” is.

 

“Are you Thai?”
This Such a weak, irrelevant deflection. Road safety isn’t about race or nationality; it’s a universal science about policies, enforcement, and infrastructure. If someone disagrees with your opinion, it doesn’t mean they’re “sticking up” for anyone—it means your argument is just not an argument.

 

“It doesn’t matter what percentage it actually is.”
This single line DESTROYS YOUR ENTIRE CREDIBILITY. If you don’t care about actual data, then you’re not arguing in good faith. You’re just pushing a narrative based on personal bias.

 

“I, and many others, have driven for years and see it daily.”
You still haven’t grasped that That’s just confirmation bias. The fact that multiple people have the same subjective experience doesn’t make it objective truth. If that were the case, science and statistics wouldn’t exist

 

“You are close-minded for looking at data instead of the whole picture.”
No—ignoring data is close-minded. The whole picture includes actual research, not just gut feelings. Again you don’t understand cognitive dissonance either.

 

Final thought? You’re arguing based on personal frustration, not actual analysis. If you want real change, you need facts, not emotional anecdotes.

 

PS - "playing chess with a pigeon" —no matter how well you play, they'll just knock over the pieces, poop on the board, and strut around like they won.

Again, since you're either not comprehending what I'm writing or are just too pigheaded to understand your shortcomings. I, and others here you're dismissing, do understand what makes accidents happen, and the stats involved.

 

When I say drivers, I mean the drivers here, as that's what we're talking about when I say I see more infractions here daily then I ever did in my 50 plus years of driving in other countries and almost all of the US states. That's observations I and others here have made. they aren't made up , lies or hallucinations. When you see things happen, they're happening, and it again, has nothing to do with race or racism.

 

Thailand has not seen much change no matter how many times they say they will do something about it, and like another said in that article, "you can't change their attitudes", which is reason one why the accidents are happening, and it all still falls on the DRIVER, attitudes towards obeying the laws, attitudes towards driving recklessly, speeding, driving drunk, arrogance or incompetence.

 

Again, since you missed this before. I asked if you were Thai because you still think it's other things besides the local drivers here who are the number one problem, and that, AGAIN, does not mean all of them, but the attitudes towards everything, including driving, are ingrained here.

 

It doesn't matter what actual percentage it is, but it means a HIGH one, as the stats show.

 

Confirmation bias has no bearing on this. Personal observation means we are actually seeing it happen, not just because we believe it's happening from prior experience.

 

We, and we means I included, are not ignoring data, as you keep missing what I, and others, have been saying. It's a combination of all the factors, but again, it's the driver who is still responsible FIRST for his and other's around his safety.

 

I'm not frustrated, I just see things a lot more clearly than you do. I know why the accidents happen, as I've said many times, but you are still not understanding who is the most responsible for them, and seeing you're repeating the same things over and over again, you never will. You keep bringing race into this, which shows I'm playing chess with a dolt who hasn't the capacity to understand simple logic.