Molly’s parents angry at unresponsive Phuket officials

[orange31]

Whilst the council should take responsibility and at least apologize to the parents, the mother should also shoulder a portion of blame for not ensuring her daughter was properly restrained in the car. A seatbelt could possibly have saved her life ?

BTW I did express my condolences to the family on the original thread, so don't bash me about it now...

How many of us really make our kids wear seat belts in the car? The problem is that unless you have the child on a booster seat at exactly the right height (which I'm not even sure you can buy here) the belt runs over the child's neck which would also be catastrophic in this kind of situation. Since this accident I've made my boy wear the belt under his arm but around his body, although I'm really not sure if this would secure him.

I'd heard that the parents were starting a private prosecution against the local authority, but haven't heard any more on that.

SDM

I'll go ahead and say that all responsible parents who care for their children make them wear seat belts. If a booster seat is needed, you get one – simple as that. Even if you haven't got a booster seat, my guess is that the pros far outweigh the cons.

If the mother didn't make sure this poor child had a seat belt on, she is equally responsible for her death as the people who allowed that hole to remain.

I assume you live in Thailand, have kids and always make them wear seat belts using a booster seat if appropriate. Only yes or no answer required, anything else and let's assume no.

I live in Thailand and always insist on passengers (children and adults) to wear a seatbelt, because I'm responsible. If you don't then shame on you, you're no better than the idiots driving motorbikes with children and no helmets.

[Beetlejuice]

In the USA this would be grounds for a Wrongful Death Action both Criminal and Civil against the Government.

But, Walking the streets of Bangkok it is apparent no body gives a damn about the conditions of the roads and sidewalks.

Dear General/PM can you send someone down to jerk a knot in somebodies ass, Please !!

If this had happened in the United States, the parents would have been suing the local authority for millions by now. With this issue it`s another don`t call me, I`ll call you and if we ignore the parents long enough, perhaps they`ll give up and fade away.

Sadly in Thailand, unless the parents are loaded, can grease the right palms, hire the best lawyers and take the matter to court, a case that could go on for years (that still gives no guarantees of a desirable result) then they have virtually no chance of progressing with this case, these people are really up against the odds.

[hansgruber]

Let's face it. Expecting inept officials to admit wrong is really not going to happen. I think it's best for the parents to remove their anger from their lives or it will fester into something you can't cure. Living angry isn't living at all.

Best wishes to Gordon and his wife in healing their pain. It will be tough.

[NamKangMan]

Let's face it. Expecting inept officials to admit wrong is really not going to happen. I think it's best for the parents to remove their anger from their lives or it will fester into something you can't cure. Living angry isn't living at all.

Best wishes to Gordon and his wife in healing their pain. It will be tough.

"Expecting inept officials to admit wrong is really not going to happen." - I agree, Hans, they are certainly "inept." However, in my opinion, it's their greed, and the corruption here, that saw no funding for emergency repairs, prior to this fatal accident.

In effect, it's not they being inept that took this girls life, it was their greed, and the system here that allows it to flourish.

Taking monthly "tea money" is one thing, allowing a dangerous part of infastructure to go unattended to, for so long, is a disgraceful neglect of office, and is the act of a criminal.

[robertthebruce]

just read in another article, the Mother, is trying to sue for 10 million baht .....

[Tomtomtom69]

First of all, my deepest condolences to the parents, horrible story, totally avoidable death caused by criminal negligence from authorities. I can just repeat what been said 100s times here, but this story had really touched me and I can't stop thinking that something should be done about it to prevent it repeating.

If, heaven forbid, something like that happened to my son, I would make it the mission of my life to make sure those who are responsible are prosecuted, or even take vengeance myself. But I would never want to be in a situation like that to begin with, and that's why road safety is #1 (and pretty much the only) my concern about living in Thailand in general. Nothing being done at all about road safety education, road improvements, rules enforcement etc, and I can tell that at such pace Thailand soon will be #1 country in the world for traffic accidents-related deaths. If there is one area of community work I would like to be involved in, it will be road safety, to make this place better for everyone.

Problem with that is I don't recall any examples (in other countries) where road safety improvements had grassrootish origin, i.e. average road users ever started some campaign that made a difference?.. please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm deeply sorry if it sounds unethical, but it is situations like Molly's that present an oppotunity to expose systematic flaws, prosecute those who should be held accountable and give a push to other people in power to start thinking about the problem.

Now, fingerpointing and social networks stunts won't help imho, for two reasons 1) Thai mentality, in which noone is held accountable, so any direct accusations will be deleted/ignored at best 2) Thai people don't care about safety in general, just like they don't care about garbage on their frontyards. One way it can work if we can really stir up a storm in social networks, so every Thai/farang person on Facebook knows what happened and who to blame (should be extremely careful about that, not to harm uninvolved people). Seems to me, Thais are more impressed with Chinese tourists' dumb stunts, than with real issues that slowly kill the country.

One way to make this issue noticeable is to create some "thai-style" demotivational photo with all details necessary (i.e. photos, names, places dates), and ask all our thai wifes/friends to share/promote it on facebook, tagging the mayor and municipality in those photos.

Another way is to make this information available to those above the mayor. The general recently announced the hot-line for expats and tourists (number is 1111). Can we make higher ranks aware of this terrible story if our good thai friends once again, call this hotline many times and flood their system with reports about Worawut Songyod's deeds?

Actually yes road safety improvements in other countries have had grassrootish origin. For example, in the USA where after an accident where a woman's car rolled over on a stretch of freeway in Washington State in 1998, which caused the death of her 4-year old son, Anton, she campaigned for a change in the law which then made all children up to age 6 or 60 pounds be forced to be seated in a front facing car seat in the back seat, not the front seat where her son was seated. I suspect this wouldn't work in Thailand because Thais don't seem to give a crap about strangers - if they are faced with tragedy where someone dies they put it down to fate, they cremate their dead, say "mai pen rai" and then try to believe in the afterlife instead of focusing on the root cause(s) of the problem and trying to ensure it never happens again.