Road Rage

[changraider]

Well Chiang Mai traffic can be daunting. I've met strong silent types who'd rather sail single-handedly across the Atlantic than venture out into the Chiang Mai traffic on a scooter (true).

But the real cause of the confusion is that here we drive on the right (left) side of the road, whereas most of you are used to driving on the wrong (right) side of the road.

Anyway pass the Johnny Walker, I need a couple of shots to steady my nerves to pop across the road to the off-license (licquor store) in my 2 ton SUV.

[mrclough]

Well Chiang Mai traffic can be daunting. I've met strong silent types who'd rather sail single-handedly across the Atlantic than venture out into the Chiang Mai traffic on a scooter (true).

But the real cause of the confusion is that here we drive on the right (left) side of the road, whereas most of you are used to driving on the wrong (right) side of the road.

Anyway pass the Johnny Walker, I need a couple of shots to steady my nerves to pop across the road to the off-license (licquor store) in my 2 ton SUV.

Not quite sure where you learned this but maybe you ought to take your books back.

Nobody has brought up the side of the road which people drive on as a point if I'm not mistaken. If I'm wrong then apologies all round but this point doesn't really have much to do at all with this thread so I don't really see your point

[kalbo123]

I am so happy that I still enjoy driving in Thailand after so many years. And I think most Thai (car) drivers do fine with their driving. I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many Thai and Farang drivers, that keeps me cool and operating well while driving.

You have never seen a serious accident... do you ever get out of your house???

I see several more or less serious accidents every week.

[uptheos]

I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many .

Come on LJW, you've been here about 20 years.....pull the other one.

[funcat]

This is getting more and more interesting...driving on the right(!)...or the left side of the road makes no difference to some of the drivers here..I've experienced that a...a few times...ones almost got killed by somebody who was driving on the wrong side(I mean the wrong side of the road), and on the FAST(!!!) lane on the double divided highway,just because the U-turn was to far ahead !!!!

...well,I'm still posting,so I'm still alive...and I did posted something about the guy shot at the gas station not to long ago...well,well again...you don't even have to be on the road to get in trouble here...I MEAN DEAD!!

...on the bright side...I'm still here

...and to the other "people" who still think,that farangs are the problem...think again...we are only a - % of the population here...:jap::jap::jap:

[likite]

Drove home from Chiang Mai this afternoon at 4 pm about 8 kilometers to my home. On the Superhighway a Thai woman in Honda Civic slowly and with no sign she saw me pulled into the outside lane to overtake, I ended up braking behind her. Did she move over to the empty middle lane after overtaking ....no. Mai ben rai thats pretty normal here.

At the lights to turn right onto the Mae Jo road a pickup on my right decided he'd swing over to my lane to make the 90% turn right, nearly a side on collision.

Turning off at McDonald's a Vios wanders over into the outside lane and suddenly brakes for no reason, I jam the brakes on. 100m further on up the carriageway a white pickup pulls away into the middle lane in front of me, I almost skid to a halt to avoid a shunt. Now I would imagine none of these drivers thought they did anything wrong but nearly 3 bumps in a few kilms.

Stuff like this happens every day its normal here, buts its pi** poor driving which ever way you want to look at it.

[Thakkar]

You can whine and rant and proclaim your righteousness all you want, but you aren't going to change the way other people drive.

You can however, control how you react. So do the doable and, as Naboo says: 'Try harder to stay alive'

T

[funcat]

You can whine and rant and proclaim your righteousness all you want, but you aren't going to change the way other people drive.

You can however, control how you react. So do the doable and, as Naboo says: 'Try harder to stay alive'

T

:jap::jap::jap:...I guess that's it folks...:jap::jap::jap:

[LJW]

I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many .

Come on LJW, you've been here about 20 years.....pull the other one.

<deleted> do you mean by that? I have been happily driving here for 27 years.

[hml367]

I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many .

Come on LJW, you've been here about 20 years.....pull the other one.

<deleted> do you mean by that? I have been happily driving here for 27 years.

REALLY? You have been driving here 27 years, which implies you have been here that long, and you have never seen a serious accident?

Hasn't it been less than one month that there were students killed in two bad road accidents? I realize you probably didn't actually see these accidents, but .........

MSPain

Edited August 24, 2011 by hml367

[kalbo123]

I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many .

Come on LJW, you've been here about 20 years.....pull the other one.

<deleted> do you mean by that? I have been happily driving here for 27 years.

Maybe you are trying so hard to avoid accidents that you don't notice the accidents around you??

Otherwise you must be blind.

[changraider]

Isn't it obvious from #3 that it was Rikki the farang who initiated the road rage, not the "fat, middle-aged well to do Thai" ?

[LJW]

I have never seen a serious accident, nor have I ever had an accident with someone. I think it is largly a feeling of being relaxed, unlike many .

Come on LJW, you've been here about 20 years.....pull the other one.

<deleted> do you mean by that? I have been happily driving here for 27 years.

Maybe you are trying so hard to avoid accidents that you don't notice the accidents around you??

Otherwise you must be blind.

Listen to me carefully, I am not blind, and, as I said, I have never seen a serious accident

[LJW]

Maybe I should start a driving school for some of these Farangs

[uptheos]

Maybe I should start a driving school for some of these Farangs

You'll never get a work permit for it........it's not a banned occupation, it's just an occupation the government hasn't heard of.

[realthaideal]

LJW, I'd say you're right in that there are plenty of Farang who don't get how much they have to adapt and be cautious here. True.

But I don't see, hear, or read of Farang driving trucks off mountain cliffs, crashing vans into railings and surrounding traffic, crossing medians to overtake and causing massive carnage with head-on collisions, plowing into intersections with red lights late at night thinking nobody will be there, turning right from the left-hand lane, driving fast late-at-night without headlights on, talking on cell phones while merging into traffic, overtaking on blind curves and killing innocents, the OP's account of just exiting a side street and thinking flowing traffic will swerve, stop or accommodate you.... shall I continue ?

Farang do have their faults in assuming things should be like where they're from. And expecting things to run quickly or smoothly as if there was the same societal order. You've got a point to slow down. I try my best, but I like to go and sometimes it's so frustrating just seeing one greedy douche blocking 2-3 lanes of traffic and making 100 people miss a light. But I try to just breathe and let it be. And can't help but think I know better.

[uptheos]

LJW, I'd say you're right in that there are plenty of Farang who don't get how much they have to adapt and be cautious here. True.

After 27 years of practice (sorry about saying 20), LJW has taken the whole concept of devils advocate into new realms.

[Methuselah]

It would be unkind of me to blame all Thai driving eccentricities on the French;however I do remember driving in France many years ago and the rule of the road was priorite a droit.{priority to cars coming from side roads to the right}.Although road regulations in Thailand are a bit obscure,could the vehicle coming from a side road into a mainstream of traffic actually possess some rights?

[chaoyang]

Listen to me carefully, I am not blind, and, as I said, I have never seen a serious accident

Indeed hard to believe. I lived there 14 years a saw more than a dozen people killed, I reckon.

[changraider]

LJW, I'd say you're right in that there are plenty of Farang who don't get how much they have to adapt and be cautious here. True.

But I don't see, hear, or read of Farang driving trucks off mountain cliffs, crashing vans into railings and surrounding traffic, crossing medians to overtake and causing massive carnage with head-on collisions, plowing into intersections with red lights late at night thinking nobody will be there, turning right from the left-hand lane, driving fast late-at-night without headlights on, talking on cell phones while merging into traffic, overtaking on blind curves and killing innocents, the OP's account of just exiting a side street and thinking flowing traffic will swerve, stop or accommodate you.... shall I continue ?

Farang do have their faults in assuming things should be like where they're from. And expecting things to run quickly or smoothly as if there was the same societal order. You've got a point to slow down. I try my best, but I like to go and sometimes it's so frustrating just seeing one greedy douche blocking 2-3 lanes of traffic and making 100 people miss a light. But I try to just breathe and let it be. And can't help but think I know better.

Yes you are right, we don't hear about expats driving like that here, maybe because expats are less than 1% of the drivers here and are not allowed to drive large commercial vehicles (unless they have work permits). But back in Europe it's different of course, farangs are regularly in major pileups, but we never hear of foreigners etc etc.

[tink2mutt]

what will change the minds of those that believe they have the right to mow down innocent riders/pedestrians etc

Guns.

Then again, do you really want blood on your hands just because somebody drove - in your opinion - stupidly?

Much better to know that somebody might come out of a soi without looking. In fact, the no-look karma turn is pretty common here. Everyone does it in the village, especially on motorbikes. Stay away from the left side when riding your bike. Expect things to come shooting out of sois. Because it happens.

Road rage, like any conflict, always needs two. Don't enable it.

PS: Other than the no-look turn, there's other driving maneuvers that we'll probably never get used to, but that we still can anticipate:

- The right turn while cutting off the corner of the oncoming lane of the road they're turning into. Approach corners with no visibility with caution

- The "right turn before oncoming traffic" rule at intersections. Is baffling and doesn't make any sense, but everyone does it. So, i do it too. Just know if you're going straight and somebody is turning right, driving across your lane, it's their right of way as the light goes green.

In summary, this is all your own fault, do better next time, and live longer. You were lucky the guy didn't lose it more than he did.

The other baffling traffic rule is "I can drive my motorbi the wrong way against the traffic if I am only going to a Soi a short distance away". I can see that this negates the need for 2 u-turns but it i very dangerous.

[funcat]

what will change the minds of those that believe they have the right to mow down innocent riders/pedestrians etc

Guns.

Then again, do you really want blood on your hands just because somebody drove - in your opinion - stupidly?

Much better to know that somebody might come out of a soi without looking. In fact, the no-look karma turn is pretty common here. Everyone does it in the village, especially on motorbikes. Stay away from the left side when riding your bike. Expect things to come shooting out of sois. Because it happens.

Road rage, like any conflict, always needs two. Don't enable it.

PS: Other than the no-look turn, there's other driving maneuvers that we'll probably never get used to, but that we still can anticipate:

- The right turn while cutting off the corner of the oncoming lane of the road they're turning into. Approach corners with no visibility with caution

- The "right turn before oncoming traffic" rule at intersections. Is baffling and doesn't make any sense, but everyone does it. So, i do it too. Just know if you're going straight and somebody is turning right, driving across your lane, it's their right of way as the light goes green.

In summary, this is all your own fault, do better next time, and live longer. You were lucky the guy didn't lose it more than he did.

The other baffling traffic rule is "I can drive my motorbi the wrong way against the traffic if I am only going to a Soi a short distance away". I can see that this negates the need for 2 u-turns but it i very dangerous.

...I just saw a car doing this today...and the real U-turn was only 100m away,but better to drive 300m against the traffic...AMAZING!!

[realthaideal]

Well.... we could try to run statistics somewhere on % of accidents per vehicles on the road Thai or Farang. I saw some crazy driving in Croatia and Greece a few years back. And in that case too, I'd chalk it up to lack of driving education or peasantry on wheels. Most of the examples I cited above are seriously only things Thais do here (vs Farangs) - be it with commercial or private vehicles. Just yesterday on Mahidol I drove over the wheel outlines of a 5-car pile up. Want to know why ? They don't even have in their driving vocabulary phrases like 'don't tailgate'. (There are other less-polite versions of it that run thru my head daily when on the road here.) How great would it be to introduce that into driver parlance and then get it incorporated into driver education ? I love the Thai people and this country, but I also have to call a spade a spade. You follow on somebody's arse by 6 inches and some glitch in the pace comes along, and you get these spectacular multi-vehicle fender benders that would never happen to us.

Are Farang perfect drivers ? No way ! We get hot headed. Get overly relaxed. We speed. We get greedy in our own ways. But the types of infractions or lack of judgement we exercise are quite different. And I'd dare say less-fatal at that.

[uptheos]

It would be unkind of me to blame all Thai driving eccentricities on the French

No it wouldn't!!

Edited August 24, 2011 by uptheos

[funcat]

Well.... we could try to run statistics somewhere on % of accidents per vehicles on the road Thai or Farang. I saw some crazy driving in Croatia and Greece a few years back. And in that case too, I'd chalk it up to lack of driving education or peasantry on wheels. Most of the examples I cited above are seriously only things Thais do here (vs Farangs) - be it with commercial or private vehicles. Just yesterday on Mahidol I drove over the wheel outlines of a 5-car pile up. Want to know why ? They don't even have in their driving vocabulary phrases like 'don't tailgate'. (There are other less-polite versions of it that run thru my head daily when on the road here.) How great would it be to introduce that into driver parlance and then get it incorporated into driver education ? I love the Thai people and this country, but I also have to call a spade a spade. You follow on somebody's arse by 6 inches and some glitch in the pace comes along, and you get these spectacular multi-vehicle fender benders that would never happen to us.

Are Farang perfect drivers ? No way ! We get hot headed. Get overly relaxed. We speed. We get greedy in our own ways. But the types of infractions or lack of judgement we exercise are quite different. And I'd dare say less-fatal at that.

+1...and I'm always trying to keep a safe distance behind...and there ALWAYS will be someone to "cut in"...!!

[changraider]

Well.... we could try to run statistics somewhere on % of accidents per vehicles on the road Thai or Farang. I saw some crazy driving in Croatia and Greece a few years back. And in that case too, I'd chalk it up to lack of driving education or peasantry on wheels. Most of the examples I cited above are seriously only things Thais do here (vs Farangs) - be it with commercial or private vehicles. Just yesterday on Mahidol I drove over the wheel outlines of a 5-car pile up. Want to know why ? They don't even have in their driving vocabulary phrases like 'don't tailgate'. (There are other less-polite versions of it that run thru my head daily when on the road here.) How great would it be to introduce that into driver parlance and then get it incorporated into driver education ? I love the Thai people and this country, but I also have to call a spade a spade. You follow on somebody's arse by 6 inches and some glitch in the pace comes along, and you get these spectacular multi-vehicle fender benders that would never happen to us.

Are Farang perfect drivers ? No way ! We get hot headed. Get overly relaxed. We speed. We get greedy in our own ways. But the types of infractions or lack of judgement we exercise are quite different. And I'd dare say less-fatal at that.

You're right, Thai doesn't have a direct translation of 'tailgating' - Thais just say 'driving too closely' - to my ears it sounds like "tajanjit". Thais are taught in their pre-test instruction to drive at least 30 metres away when driving at highway speeds. Contrary to the views of some posters on this thread the Thai droving test is very similar to that in the UK with a theory and a practical element, and the practical element is on public roads (in my meuang anyway). I also agree that Thais probably have more accidents than farangs, but is that really the point here? This thread is mainly about road rage, and we know that macho farang culture encourages this whereas Thai culture discourages emotional displays. The OP also acknowledges, probably unwittingly, that he initiated the road rage (in #3). A good driver anywhere is one that minimises risk to all road users, I'm sure you're one of those, so happy trails to you :-) apologies for any typos, I'm writing this from my mobile, but at least I'm not driving (very fast) at the same time ;-)

[LJW]

LJW, I'd say you're right in that there are plenty of Farang who don't get how much they have to adapt and be cautious here. True.

After 27 years of practice (sorry about saying 20), LJW has taken the whole concept of devils advocate into new realms.

"In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, just for the sake of argument"

Please pay attention to what I am saying because I am not playing a devils advocate game... I never say things that I do not believe. It has never been my style. But clearly there are many who disagree, but at the same time I have had a few pm's from people who agree with me but do not post here because they can not take the criticisms. For myself I post here because I think my opinion is as important as anyone else, and the disagreements, even the idiotic ones, rarely get me mad

[Thakkar]

In the Seventies and Eighties, during a period of fast growth, a formerly rural area of Hong Kong known as Yuen Long, rapidly urbanized within a few years. Highways, roads, street widening, massive housing estates and a light rail transit system were piled on one after the other. There was a spate of easily preventable accidents caused by bad driving, people failing to move out of the way and pedestrians crossing without looking, or crossing too slowly.

Turns out that driver/pedestrian education hadn't kept up with the overnight growth of what was becoming a whole new city. The original residents had simply been caught flat-footed and had failed to adjust.

The West urbanized at a much slower pace than the urbanization occurring in developing countries. There was considerably more time for people and systems to adjust. Sadly, governments rarely learn from the mistakes of past governments or from the experiences of governments elsewhere so that every developing country is more of less going through the same mill.

The erratic driving, flexible rules compliance and general confusion on the roads here can, I think, be explained by the fact that we have a lot of the accouterments of a modern city but with a public mindset and bureaucratic functionings of a generation ago; the software simply hasn't caught up with the hardware.

T

[chaoyang]

The erratic driving, flexible rules compliance and general confusion on the roads here can, I think, be explained by the fact that we have a lot of the accouterments of a modern city but with a public mindset and bureaucratic functionings of a generation ago; the software simply hasn't caught up with the hardware.

T

Very well put. The particularly horrific accidents I've seen -- one involving a pickup that ran a red light at highway four-way and plowed into about 10 motorcycles that zoomed off the second the light turned green without looking -- happened at speed. The highways are good enough to get to a high enough velocity to cause some amazing damage, but the mindset is still the "farmer" pulling out on a quiet country road without looking.

[muchogra]

I think Post 58 by keo says it well about Thai drivers in general.