WHO report on worldwide road safety reveals room for improvement in Thailand

[webfact]

WHO report on worldwide road safety reveals room for improvement in Thailand
By Coconuts Bangkok


Car crash on the side of a highway during the Songkran holidays. Photo: Alexander Hotz/ Coconuts Media

BANGKOK: -- A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO), the “Global status report on road safety 2015,” provides unique insight into road issues around the world.

According to the report, 1.25 million people worldwide die each year from accidents related to road injuries. In Asia, China reports the highest number of road deaths at 261,367. Thailand reported 14,000 road fatalities in a year.

The report for Thailand (data collected in 2012) says that, in a country of 67 million people, there are 32 million registered vehicles. It goes on to note that 26 percent of road deaths in the country involve alcohol and that 4.6 percent of people admitted to hospitals for injuries related to car crashes are permanently disabled from their accident.

Full story: http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2016/05/26/who-report-worldwide-road-safety-reveals-room-improvement-thailand


-- Coconuts Bangkok 2016-05-26

[Pimay1]

WHO report on worldwide road safety reveals room for improvement in Thailand

Talk about the understatement of the century.

[smutcakes]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

[inaktive]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

why not ? they have about 20% of the worlds people !

and i also have to say that the Thai numbers are most likely "adjusted" to not make them look too bad.

[kkerry]

room for improvement...

When I read that about the road toll Thailand, for some reason 'to be number one' springs to mind...

[Briggsy]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

I take it you haven't experienced (mainland) Chinese driving then. We ain't talking disciplined Singapore here.

[thequietman]

room for improvement...

When I read that about the road toll Thailand, for some reason 'to be number one' springs to mind...

[clockman]

14,000 they wish!

[Pib]

Weak law enforcement is part of the problem in that Thais have little to no fear of being ticketed for a driving infraction. But mainly, it's simply the Thai attitude about safety across the board, but it's especially bad concerning driving and electrical safety.

[shawn000]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

why not ? they have about 20% of the worlds people !

and i also have to say that the Thai numbers are most likely "adjusted" to not make them look too bad.

That is the problem with these stats, different countries have different ways of counting, Thailand only counts those who die at the scene, most Western countries also count those who die later of injuries sustained from the accident, WHO does apply some ratio to try to equal the measurement method but it really just a guess.

[shawn000]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

I take it you haven't experienced (mainland) Chinese driving then. We ain't talking disciplined Singapore here.

5 times as many deaths per 100,000 vehicles in China than Singapore, but then 4 times as many in Singapore than the UK, they are hardly one of the best.

[Mosha]

Room for improvement, no shit Sherlock.

Sent from my SMART_4G_Speedy_5inch using Tapatalk

[slapout]

I think its a given that Thailand under reports road fatilities. Some knowledgable individuals estimate the reported number of deaths on a yearly basis are in reality about 2 to 2.5 times more than reported. I doubt anyone really knows, but its probably a figure between 30 to 40,000.About the only time we hear numbers that may be approaching real is during holiday and many feel that is close to the normal count.

I doubt WHO personel devoted a lot of time, travel, or effort in Thailand after their first exposure to traffic on the roadways. That scares most foeigners when they are exposed it. A lorry or double decker bus approaching your auto head on in your designated lane of the roadway can be somewhat unnerving. and there are many places you cannot get to in this country via air or train.

[thai3]

One person dies about every 20 minutes on Thai roads, surely they can make it one every 30 minutes if they try?

[Pib]

I think the article's last statement sums it for this part of the world.

Southeast Asia road fatalities account for a whopping 25% of global road traffic deaths.

[jamesbrock]

Thailand's entry in the report:

9789241565066_eng.pdf

[jerojero]

Room for improvement. Ha ha ha...No shit Sherlock! Monstrous improvement needed!

[Khun Paul]

iN Thailand DEATHS DUE TO ACCIDENTS ARE THOSE THAT DIE AT THE ACCIDENT IF YOU DIE IN HOSPITAL EVEN MINUTES LATER IT IS NOT A DEATH DUE TO ACCIDENT.....GO FIGURE

[wabothai]

How would good old George Carlin have phrased this? I can guess.

[williamgeorgeallen]

iN Thailand DEATHS DUE TO ACCIDENTS ARE THOSE THAT DIE AT THE ACCIDENT IF YOU DIE IN HOSPITAL EVEN MINUTES LATER IT IS NOT A DEATH DUE TO ACCIDENT.....GO FIGURE

government hospital care is very poor so it is realistic that many of the injured died as a result of poor treatment.

[Caveat Emptor]

Sure;y that cannot be right, that China accounts for 20% of the total road deaths?

why not ? they have about 20% of the worlds people !

and i also have to say that the Thai numbers are most likely "adjusted" to not make them look too bad.

Good Point, where did the WHO get the figures for Thailand ?

If using figures supplied by Thailand ...

[GeorgesAbitbol]

Studies prove that the more the police is corrupted, the more road accidents....

[cardinalblue]

Those 4 foreigners heading from the airport to town recently were injuried in a taxi accident...

They weren't WHO employees were they? ?

[HerbalEd]

14,000 they wish!

What is the actual number, then? You do know, right?

[BlindMagician]

Might be one positive...if it's mostly the stupid who die. Might eventually increase the national IQ.

[The Deerhunter]

Definitely a slow news day. today. This and Pattaya ladyboys' breasts.

[bazza40]

14,000 they wish!

Agree, that's way under - more like 30,000. And that ignores people dying on their way to or in hospital.

The WHO is doing its usual sterling job of understating the bleeding obvious.

[GanDoonToonPet]

iN Thailand DEATHS DUE TO ACCIDENTS ARE THOSE THAT DIE AT THE ACCIDENT IF YOU DIE IN HOSPITAL EVEN MINUTES LATER IT IS NOT A DEATH DUE TO ACCIDENT.....GO FIGURE

Read the report. It clearly states 'Defined as unlimited time period following crash.'

Good Point, where did the WHO get the figures for Thailand ?

If using figures supplied by Thailand ...

Read the report. It clearly states the source as 'Bureau of Policy and Strategy, Office of Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Health.'

[jamesbrock]

Good Point, where did the WHO get the figures for Thailand ?

If using figures supplied by Thailand ...

According to the report, Thailand, along with India, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Viet Nam, is categorised as a country with "other sources of information on causes of death" - i.e. not one of the 85 countries with "death registration data meeting the following completeness criteria: completeness for the year estimated at 80% or more, or average completeness for the decade including the country-year was 80% or more."

The most recent acceptable figures for Thailand were from 2002 (even then, the proportion of "ill-defend" causes of death was nearly 50%). In order to improve the usability of the death registration data, the Thai Ministry of Health conducted a re-test survey on a sample of about 33,000 deaths, using verbal autopsy methods, to ascertain the true cause of death. Then:

a regression model was used to estimate total road traffic deaths. As for the previous reports, we used a negative binomial regression model, appropriate for modelling non-negative integer count data (number of road traffic deaths). A likelihood ratio test was used to assess that the negative binomial model provided a better fit to the data than a Poisson model (where the variance of the data is constrained to equal the mean).

lnN =C +β₁ X₁ +β₂X₂ +....+β_nX_n +lnPop+ε (1)

where N is the total road traffic deaths (for a country-year), C is a constant term, X_i are a set of explanatory covariates, Pop is the population for the country-year, and ε is the negative binomial error term. Population was used as exposure, making it possible to interpret the coefficients (β_i) for the independent variables as effects on rates rather than a count. In a previous study, this type of model was used to represent “accident proneness”. Karlaftis and Tarko have also found a negative binomial regression model to be the appropriate for count data such as road traffic fatalities.

The parameters β1, β2, β3 ··· βn (equation 1) were estimated by fitting the negative binomial regression model to estimated total road traffic deaths for all country-years in the range 2000–2013 meeting the completeness criteria by using the number of road of traffic deaths from countries from group 1 described above. We chose three models (Models A, B and C) that had good in-sample- and out-of-sample fit, and for which all the covariates were statistically significant. The final estimates were derived as the average of the predictions from these three models.

That is how they came up with the 24,237 figure (the 2012 figures provided by 'Bureau of Policy and Strategy, Office of Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Health' were deemed incomplete, therefore unacceptable for statistical purposes).

Death registration information is submitted to WHO regularly by Ministries of Health from around the world, and most is coded using the International Classification of Diseases 9th or 10th revisions (1, 2, 3). Using this classification all deaths that follow from a road traffic death are counted as such, regardless of the time period in which they occur (unlike many official road traffic surveillance data sources, where road traffic death data are based on a 30-day definition following a road traffic crash). WHO applies certain criteria to ascertain the quality of this death registration data and where the death registration data were considered to be of high quality these data were used for this report.

You did ask!

[CarolJadzia]

There is no 2015 study, it was based on the data from 2013. It's all 'estimates'.

If you go through the W.H.O. country profiles from around the world then you will also find there are a few countries who do not report at all.

So Thailand is at No2 behind a war zone - amongst the countries that record their figures.

But there are other things as well. Thailand has ten times the number of motorcycles compared to most developed countries. 80% of road fatalities in Thailand are reported to be Motorcyclists. Most could be addressed if people were taught basic on-road interactive skills rather than only off-road vehicle handling skills. But people still prefer to blame accidents on spirits instead.