Bangkok To Impose Stricter Traffic Laws

[webfact]

Bangkok to impose stricter traffic laws

BANGKOK, 12 September 2012 (NNT) - The Bangkok Metropolitan Council (BMC) is planning to impose stricter traffic law while raising awareness on road safety to help reduce road casualties in the capital.

BMC Chairman Suthichai Weerakulsunthorn and his entourage have visited London to observe the works of the UK Department for Transport. The department has since set up a road planning and safety system that helps reduce road accidents and casualties.

Safety is the priority for this system. The streets and vehicles are frequently inspected to make sure they are in good condition. Campaigns to encourage motorists to strictly obey traffic laws have also been conducted continuously.

Mr Suthichai said the British agency places an emphasis on strictly enforcing traffic laws to ensure safety of the people. As Bangkok is a big city with huge traffic jam and many road accident, he said the BMC will ask the government to amend traffic laws enabling it to deal more seriously with traffic law violatiors in order to reduce the number of accidents.

Meanwhile, a representative from the BMC's traffic department has commented that London has a higher road safety because its people strictly abide by traffic rules, which is in contrast to motorists in Bangkok, who tend to flout the rules, making traffic jam even worse.

-- NNT 2012-09-12

[BookMan]

Would be nice to see traffic rule enforcement that wasn't just about making money for individual police.

How about starting with a severe penalty for drivers who flee the scene of an accident?

[McMagus]

'The streets and vehicles are frequently inspected to make sure they are in good condition'.

Great, bring it on...we could start with getting rid of half the clapped out buses...or maybe even enforce the existing laws. I guess the BIB will be orgasmic at the thought of a new raft of laws to flout and get tea money from ...might even need to start at the middle of the month than the last day or two.

[Arkady]

London also has more sensible road systems without U-turns where vision is blocked by police signs turning them into black spots, flyovers that force traffic to filter into lanes of fast moving traffic, thousands of brain dead motor cyclists and utterly corrupt police.

[laurentbkk]

You Want to improve road safety ? Easy , send Thais to driving school , nothing else . Why in other countries everybody have to go to learn and not in Thailand ? I wonder ... Cars are more powerfull than ever , when you don't know what to do or how to react in front of danger , learning how to is a necessity . No need to send a group of export to London for holidays paid by tax payers to understand this. Of course not all Thais are bad drivers ... But the biggest majority, sorry .

[spidermike007]

Explain something to me. How do you impose more fines, and penalties, when the entire nation knows that an 18 year old mass murderer, who killed 9 people who happened to be in her way, gets off with 2 years probation? How do you explain to the Thai people, and the world that is watching the continuing child follies taking place here, with the neophyte officials, that the country has all of a sudden, gotten serious about saving lives? What is going to actually change? Are they no going to allow 10 year old kids to drive motorbikes, in Samui? Are they no longer going to allow a family of four to drive together on one bike? Are they going to start telling people they have to wear a real helmet, that has actually survived a crash test, and not these silly, 200 baht plastic shells, that pass as helmets, but explode on impact, when hitting the asphalt, exposing the head to massive injury? What is going to change? When are the 13 year old boys, posing as government officials, actually going to do something productive?

[orosee]

Laws can't be strict. Law enforcement can be.

[theoldgit]

On a positive note, at least BMC Chairman Suthichai Weerakulsunthorn and his entourage got themselves a jolly to London.

[bdenner]

I guess one the first items on their agenda should be to either stop wasting paint on 'zebra' crossings or force motorists to give way to pedestrians.

[SCARLETIBIS1]

_{My recommendation is that all the police officers must first be shown what a stop sign looks like so when all the cars go thru it they will know what to do. I doubt most of these jokers could even pass a driving test.}

_{Second thing is to give all the cops a color blind test. I assume a requirement for becoming a traffic cop is to be color blind. If you can see the color red you do not qualify. They might want to then change the color of all lights requiring the traffic to stop from red to green and leave the green one the way it is. That should get rid of a lot of congestion and the police can continue to do what they do so well-nothing.}

_{In the event the first two suggestions do not work I suggest giving all cars a turret with a 50 calibre machine gun on each hood. That should do it.}

_{The following question was asked on the driver's license test:}

_{Which of the following is illegal? a) Driving a tank down the highway or driving with a cracked windshield?}

_{How many of you out there got it right? Anyone out there have a used Abrams army tank in good condition? I am looking for one with air conditioning.}

Edited September 12, 2012 by SCARLETIBIS1

[NoshowJones]

Would be nice to see traffic rule enforcement that wasn't just about making money for individual police.

How about starting with a severe penalty for drivers who flee the scene of an accident?

Have to be careful here, I may be wrong, but some drivers flee to avoid being attacked by locals near the scene of the accident, also it is well known when there is about four or five Thai guys against one, they are very brave, but not so brave when there is one on one.

[Dr Robert]

The number of deaths and injuries on Thai roads is a national catastrophe.If a Jumbo jet full of people crashed at Suvarnabhumi every week for a year it would not come close to the number of traffic fatalities in that same year. Who would fly if that were the case? Yet people without licences, without a sense of mortatlity and without much in the way of common sense get behind the wheel every day. There needs to be changes in the law, law enforcement, training and education.This will take three strategies to begin to rectify the problems; time, strong will and a lot of money. As I see it, there is little will, no money and scant patience -but on the upside, at least it is in the national debate and voices are being heard and it may just be the beginnings of change for the better.

[madmitch]

You Want to improve road safety ? Easy , send Thais to driving school , nothing else . Why in other countries everybody have to go to learn and not in Thailand ? I wonder ... Cars are more powerfull than ever , when you don't know what to do or how to react in front of danger , learning how to is a necessity . No need to send a group of export to London for holidays paid by tax payers to understand this. Of course not all Thais are bad drivers ... But the biggest majority, sorry .

Totally agree, and have a real driving test.

The problem with that is that a driving test examiner would become one of the most sought after jobs in Thailand as others watch them move into their multi-million baht houses.

[NoshowJones]

London also has more sensible road systems without U-turns where vision is blocked by police signs turning them into black spots, flyovers that force traffic to filter into lanes of fast moving traffic, thousands of brain dead motor cyclists and utterly corrupt police.

There is one way that London, in fact the whole of the UK would do well to copy Thailand. They should allow vehicles to do a left turn if it is safe to do so on a red light, it would help to keep the traffic moving as it does in both Thailand and America.

[MikeyIdea]

Good, perhaps we can see driving license suspension and enforcement of it too. That would solve the traffic jam problems quite effectively

[Katipo]

I read the headline as...... "Police to collect more bribes from motorists"

[NoshowJones]

You Want to improve road safety ? Easy , send Thais to driving school , nothing else . Why in other countries everybody have to go to learn and not in Thailand ? I wonder ... Cars are more powerfull than ever , when you don't know what to do or how to react in front of danger , learning how to is a necessity . No need to send a group of export to London for holidays paid by tax payers to understand this. Of course not all Thais are bad drivers ... But the biggest majority, sorry .

We all know that a very high percentage of Thai drivers are really bad, so where would you get good Thai driving instructors? Before someone says use Farangs as they do to teach English, I can't see that happening.

[misterme]

Bangkok really needs to start from scratch.

The number of one way streets in the centre of town make for a disaster in city planning.

Make all roads run both directions.

Enforce no stopping and no parking zones, and you're off to a good start.

[newermonkey]

One of the biggest problems is that the police (or individual policemen) don’t know right from wrong themselves.

If they want to learn from the Brits then they must set up some proper infrastructure such as:

1) Police driving school, which will include advanced driving (Cardington, UK.)

2) Setup proper training and testing of instructors (ADI. UK)

3) Completely renew the driver testing system (The one used now is wrong and run by ignorant zombies)

4) Try to install some pride in driving correctly, at the moment drivers don’t care a shit and in fact think they are clever when they do wrong.

5) TV adds should depict driver stupidity and make fun of it. so people will look down on stupidity and idiots will loose face.

6) Improve driver instruction signage, such as - "GIVE WAY TO TRAFFIC ON YOUR RIGHT WHEN ENTERING ROUNDABOUT". (this can be done pictorially)

This is probably beyond the capabilities of this country, unfortunately.

The absence of common sense and basic courtesy will always make driving in Thailand a pain in the butt.

[SCARLETIBIS1]

Finding common sense in Thailand would be like finding a golden p...y in a whore house which of course would be impossible in the first place since prostitution does not exist in Thailand.

Edited September 12, 2012 by SCARLETIBIS1

[siampreggers]

Bangkok to impose stricter traffic laws

Why not start enforcing existing ones.

Did officials really need an all expenses paid trip to London to see that fining/punishing people who ride the wrong way down a main road with no helmet is beneficial.

Edited September 12, 2012 by siampreggers

[Tatsujin]

London has a higher road safety because its people strictly abide by traffic rules, which is in contrast to motorists in Bangkok, who tend to flout the rules, making traffic jam even worse

Wow, does that mean they actually understand the problem and will now do something about it at last . . . ?

[Pormax]

How can one 'impose stricter traffic laws' when there isn't any in the first place.

To me it seems for the Thai drivers there are guidlines not laws. Or am I mistaken?

I love Thailand but after driving in more than a dozen countries I can honestly say that Tha's are the worst drivers I have ever come accross.

[wrazoru]

Even if the YELLOW BOXES - a common UK traffic feature - at intersections were enforced I'm sure traffic would be much better in Bangkok!!! They're on the roads ALREADY?!!!

I think this is much less a issue of tea money than enforcement...in fact, if more of the rules were enforced, there would actually be more possibilities of a good tea time break!!!

[siampreggers]

You mean the Thais will have to think of others and disadvantage themselves accordingly by stopping, not driving the wrong way down a street and all sorts of other inconvenient behaviours that are unnatural to them.

that's asking a lot of them.

Edited September 12, 2012 by siampreggers

[MaxYakov]

At the higher level, what we're dealing with here is a country of largely poor people on the verge of vehicular (and other?) anarchy combined in many cases with poor roads and a largely scoff-law driving populace. The government would have to invoke virtually a police state, improve the roads and do something about the Tuk-Tuks, motorbikes and other dangerous vehicles to effect a substantial change.

I was toured around Moscow in the mid nineties in a nondescript Fiat sedan. We were stopped almost every single day for a paper or some other type of check. Once, a foot policeman on the sidewalk peered into our car to check that our restraining belts were fastened. I wasn't surprised when we came around a curve and there was a cop leaning on the hood of his car with a radar gun pointed at us. One time we were flagged on a one of the high-speed ring expressways after dark by the simple waving of a flashlight by a single walking traffic cop. The point is there was extreme enforcement. The driver knew his license could be revoked and his livelihood ended if he ignored law enforcement and they got his license plate number. It was a police state.

Edited September 12, 2012 by MaxYakov

[rafish]

How about just enforcing the laws on the books as they are? Never see a cop anywhere unless he's taking a bribe. why print something like this? what a foolish waste of computer space.

[bombis]

You can have as many new traffic rules as you want, as long as all the men iin brown are corrupt and take bribes for pretty much any traffic offense you can imagine, nothing will change.

[Dodobird]

New strict traffic laws not applicable to those with connections and/or power and/or monies ...

[samjaidee]

Compulsory driving lessons by a qualified instructor followed by a driving test on the road, not a piece of concrete would be a good start.

The UK has the safest roads in the world because it has one of the toughest driving tests in the world.

Imposing stricter traffic law will have no effect unless the police are prepared to enforce it. Somehow that seems a little unlikely.