The roads won’t get safer on their own

[observer90210]

Foreigners are a vital component on these Thai road safety campaigns...as it is well known that it is the drunk farangs who make the Thai roads unsafe!!...and....

 

......because foreigners have a much higher value on road block checks for racket, tea money extortion on various  pretexts, with the compliments of the Thai trafic police!

[jerojero]

Duh! to majority of statements made. Expats have been saying same for decades.

[cumgranosalus]

"Citizens need to care more, officials need to do more and police need to do their job" - 3 issues concerning road safety. ... but not the whole picture.

Over the last 60 to 70 years Thailand has set in motion an exponential curve that has allowed an increasingly rapid development of an infrastructure of death and destruction on Thai roads. Anything that Bloomberg offer - and one has to question the underlying motivation - is nothing more than a Band-Aid.

 

Thai police apparently don't even know how to gather road statistics in any recognised way - recording only "deaths at scene" - this ignores the standard process of deaths, severe injuries and minor injuries. real stats are gathered by "outsiders" from other sources.

 

Road designers seem to have avoided any kind of formal education (preferring to get their positions through "connections??)

A similar situation exists with road traffic engineers - I see know sign of a common educated approach to this vital science. Junctions, signage etc. in Thailand are a complete mess. Instead it seems to lie at least to some extent to the police to sort out the day to day issues - why would the police know anything about this science?

 

Some people like to replace an argument with cynicism and just sit back and declare "it will never change" - this is a sad and defeatist attitude - it is also not based on reality - the situation has already changed, it is just not reflected in the single statistic that most commentators cling to - the deaths per 100k. In reality the roads, number of vehicles and drivers, density of traffic the demographics of road users are changing dramatically - it is just that the Thai authorities seem to have shosen to remain ignorant of how to deal with this. In the end it inevitably will change as road safety or rather the lack of it is costing the nation a fortune and could eventually be something that it simply can't afford.

 

So - Bloomberg - nice Band-Aid - but let's hope that the Thai authorities see it not as a cure but a starting point

 

 

 

 

[mok199]

and yet the 9 day blood bath called''songkran'' continues....Revenue vs thai death toll...you do the math...

[mok199]

and yet the 9 day blood bath called''songkran'' continues....Revenue vs thai road fatalit...you do the math...

[mok199]

and yet the 9 day blood bath called''songkran'' continues....Revenue vs thai road fatality's...you do the math...

[cumgranosalus]

6 hours ago, mok199 said:

and yet the 9 day blood bath called''songkran'' continues....Revenue vs thai death toll...you do the math...

Death toll per 100k  - if that is the stat you are referring to - is reportedly the same or  actually reduces at Song Khran

Edited August 14, 2017 by cumgranosalus

[oldlakey]

On 8/13/2017 at 4:44 PM, fusion58 said:

 

 

 

This isn't necessarily true. I know a Thai girl, for example, who survived a near-fatal motorcycle crash and who still drives just as recklessly and carelessly (sometimes while inebriated) as before her accident.

 

Moral of the story: you can't fix stupid.

Well its easy to understand her attitude / behaviour,  as the accident was obviously not her fault

[oldlakey]

On 8/14/2017 at 11:41 AM, cumgranosalus said:

Death toll per 100k  - if that is the stat you are referring to - is reportedly the same or  actually reduces at Song Khran

Yes I have heard that as well, who knows it might even be true for whatever reason, less drinking and driving is not the reason though must be luck I reckon

[cumgranosalus]

3 hours ago, oldlakey said:

Yes I have heard that as well, who knows it might even be true for whatever reason, less drinking and driving is not the reason though must be luck I reckon

Road deaths around the world go down on big holidays.....commercial traffic is light, police mount campaigns and many people use buses or taxis instead of taking their own car. In Thailand it is also possible that the percentage of motorcycles on the roads goes down

[oldlakey]

19 minutes ago, cumgranosalus said:

Road deaths around the world go down on big holidays.....commercial traffic is light, police mount campaigns and many people use buses or taxis instead of taking their own car. In Thailand it is also possible that the percentage of motorcycles on the roads goes down

No argument for sure with what you say

The problem is the amount of people who are TERMED arrested for drink driving, and the difference in the number of the resulting impounded vehicles just a handful of cars and bikes from people who either lost their money or who spent up before they encountered the money making machine

The difference is numbered in thousands if you can believe the numbers again, but as I say maybe they were lucky and got home without causing too much death and carnage

Songkran is fingers crossed time for all, for different reasons

Edited August 17, 2017 by oldlakey

[ramrod711]

Attitude adjustment required. Just this morning on a 4 lane road, a songtaew passed me on the left as we approached an intersection. The driver stuck his arm out the window, proceeded to shake it up and down while he moved 3 lanes to the right. Before I even had a chance to slow he cut me off and I cursed him. My wife was angry...at me. I tried to explain that a signal is a request for permission to enter your lane not a notice that you're coming over no matter what. My wife explained that "some people need the money, we don't need the money, so he was right". This is so wrong headed that I was speechless, and thinking that I have wasted the last 12 years of my life here. Not only do I find the driving to be beyond comprehension, I question my wife's sanity.

[ballpoint]

I was just thinking about this sort of thing after seeing an idiot foreigner riding a motor cycle at excessive speed up a jammed Sukhumvit Soi 11, on the wrong side of the road and cutting into small gaps whenever someone came the other way - narrowly missing a group of tourists crossing the road between the stationary cars, who weren't thinking to look for someone coming up behind them the wrong way.  Would he do this in his home country?  Maybe, but probably not.  He, and other foreigners caught following hit and runs here, as well as the large numbers who do drive like idiots in the West when they think they can get away with it, demonstrate that it's not common sense that makes people generally drive more safely there than here, it's the fear of getting caught that does it.  I'd even go as far to say that, given the lack of law enforcement on the roads here, the driving is actually not so bad, as I'd wager that the death toll in the West would be just as bad, if not worse, if the same slackness towards driver's licenses, driver education and general enforcement was applied there.  You just need to look at how quickly order breaks down in many Western countries when the law momentarily loses its grip, such as when looting and rioting break out during black outs and natural disasters, to see how thin the veneer of "Western civilisation" really is.  Compare that to how life goes on here, where the law has a rather tenacious grip at the best of times.  Yes, the law is rotten here, but it's rotten from the top.  Trying to make out that the consequences we see from that are due to "the Thai DNA", or ""they" are used to ox carts and can't deal with modern technology" as one poster actually put it in another thread, are bigotted bashings given that the West would, and does, act the same way when ever it can.  Yes, I rail at the idiots here who overtake on blind corners, just as I do to the idiots in other countries who do the same thing, and yes, I would often like to punch them on the nose given the chance, showing how thin the veneer of civilisation is in me too, but the nose could be a Thai nose, or an American nose, or an Australian nose, or a Chinese one, or an English one.  Idiocy is a human trait, not a racial or national one, and an idiot will do something stupid on the road when he thinks he can get away with it whatever his origin may be.

[oldlakey]

2 hours ago, ballpoint said:

I was just thinking about this sort of thing after seeing an idiot foreigner riding a motor cycle at excessive speed up a jammed Sukhumvit Soi 11, on the wrong side of the road and cutting into small gaps whenever someone came the other way - narrowly missing a group of tourists crossing the road between the stationary cars, who weren't thinking to look for someone coming up behind them the wrong way.  Would he do this in his home country?  Maybe, but probably not.  He, and other foreigners caught following hit and runs here, as well as the large numbers who do drive like idiots in the West when they think they can get away with it, demonstrate that it's not common sense that makes people generally drive more safely there than here, it's the fear of getting caught that does it.  I'd even go as far to say that, given the lack of law enforcement on the roads here, the driving is actually not so bad, as I'd wager that the death toll in the West would be just as bad, if not worse, if the same slackness towards driver's licenses, driver education and general enforcement was applied there.  You just need to look at how quickly order breaks down in many Western countries when the law momentarily loses its grip, such as when looting and rioting break out during black outs and natural disasters, to see how thin the veneer of "Western civilisation" really is.  Compare that to how life goes on here, where the law has a rather tenacious grip at the best of times.  Yes, the law is rotten here, but it's rotten from the top.  Trying to make out that the consequences we see from that are due to "the Thai DNA", or ""they" are used to ox carts and can't deal with modern technology" as one poster actually put it in another thread, are bigotted bashings given that the West would, and does, act the same way when ever it can.  Yes, I rail at the idiots here who overtake on blind corners, just as I do to the idiots in other countries who do the same thing, and yes, I would often like to punch them on the nose given the chance, showing how thin the veneer of civilisation is in me too, but the nose could be a Thai nose, or an American nose, or an Australian nose, or a Chinese one, or an English one.  Idiocy is a human trait, not a racial or national one, and an idiot will do something stupid on the road when he thinks he can get away with it whatever his origin may be.

Yes I agree with all that, but it does not change the actual fact of genuine law enforcement in a first world country and what takes place in Thailand

Hence the large difference in the road slaughter

Thailand is at the extreme end of stupidity when it comes to road behaviour and manners, just look at the death toll how can anybody view that without deep sadness whatever the reasons behind it

Yes law and order does break down in first world countries on a local basis now and again when the locals spot an opening, but its soon recovered try and understand the difference between that situation and the norm in Thailand

My real attitude is if you wont help yourself then get on with it

I wont worry about human nature too much either, or idiocy as you put it its the reason we keep killing each other all over the place