Korat Ranked Top in Songkran Road Fatalities

By Teeranai Charuvastra, Staff Reporter

 

An ambulance skid off the road in Khon Kaen on April 11 after the driver reportedly dozed off, injuring a patient and nurses inside the vehicle.

 

BANGKOK — Road accidents throughout five days of the Songkran holiday claimed 283 lives this year, with Korat having the highest number of fatalities, the government disaster agency announced Saturday.

 

Of those deaths, 17 occurred in the northeastern province alone, though Chiang Mai had the highest number of injuries, 145. The numbers were released as part of the routine butcher’s bill for the annual “Seven Dangerous Days,” a week that covers the traditional Thai New Year festival, during which hundreds of thousands of people travel on the road.

 

Full story: http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/transpo/2017/04/16/korat-ranked-top-songkran-road-fatalities/

 

 

-- © Copyright Khaosod English 2017-04-16

On the average, there are 76 road fatalities / day. (28 000 a year) so (ONLY)  56 a day over Song Kran is pretty good. Or is some kind of manipulation going on , showing that the police and road safety guys are doing their job? No, I take that back, not possible

It goes to show having health ins is a waste of time as by the looks of things you would only have a 90 perc chance of getting to a hospital through the traffic if you stay on the road

I can see why korat has & i would blame the i**ts from BKK as my very short trip on the Khon Khean highway showed that they had to use EVERY inch of the asphalt, ducking & weaving through traffic to realize ( oh no they wouldnt ) to make maybe 50 mtrs before their caught up in a grid lock again 

Sadly... this isnt a suprising statistic.  For every great party theres a big hangover

Such statistics might give the impression they are particularly mad in Korat.

But as described in BEVUP's post it's simply due to the fact that a huge part of traffic from Bangkok/southeast to Isan goes through Korat (N.R.) province (#2, #304, #24, #201, #205).

It is an unfair comparison to rate Khorat top of the accident poll as if drivers in Khorat are far worse than elsewhere.

 

In actual fact Khorat, which is huge anyway in comparison to most other provinces, is the main gateway leading to and from many destinations throughout the country.

 

Therefore, it is reasonable to expect it will have much more traffic on the roads from private to commercial vehicles, and therefore more accidents.

 

However, let's not truth or the facts get in the way of a good story.

3 hours ago, cooked said:

On the average, there are 76 road fatalities / day. (28 000 a year) so (ONLY)  56 a day over Song Kran is pretty good. Or is some kind of manipulation going on , showing that the police and road safety guys are doing their job? No, I take that back, not possible

Reminds me of the media "feeding frenzy" about shark bites and subsequent sightings several years ago along the US South/Southeastern Gulf coast - which is chock-a-block full of sharks all the time.  

 

Starts with a slow news day, kid gets bitten by a shark at the beach in Podunkville, Ef El A.  Some Local Yokel Goober rushes to the scene and reports on it breathlessly cause it's the only thing remotely interesting that's happened in two weeks.  Got some blood and suffering, so it gets picked up by a regional outlet. 

 

Another one happens elsewhere and Goober #2, seeing the success of Goober #1, strikes while the iron is hot, this could be HIS big break!  It makes it to Regional news and Goober #3 (the producer) thinks 2 is good enough to fabricate a trend, and alerts the Lame Stream Media.  

 

Another shark interaction occurs somewhere else the same day along 100s of miles of coastline, so CNN picks it up and next thing you know, it's National news, breathless reporting about how Sharks seem to have colluded and declared a coordinated war on humans.  Helicopters hover over a swarm of Hammerheads just off the coast (which they are prone to do every year), but most never see. OMG!!!  CNN slaps up a BREAKING NEWS! into screen with big red letters "Deadly Summer of the Shark!", with some of the letters dripping blood, set to JAWS music score.  

 

And then we dropped some bombs on a country, or the stock market dropped 9 points, and   suddenly, like turning off a light switch, no more shark attacks.  Poof.  Gone.  All done.