DEATH BY STUPIDITY

[villager]

Oh so sorry, an' I thought the ones doing the ramming where the educated rich kids in their Mercedes, silly me!

Erm... don´t have to be sarcastic... Its actually everybody here but I know couple of accidents involving my ex brothers family when the busdriver fell asleep and almost rammed their car, the brother was forced to steer away and hit a tree, which resulted with him, his wife and their twin sons died.
The driver escaped after that incident and haven´t been caught yet... and this is like 10 years ago... Busdrivers in Bangkok sometimes race with eachother and I remember one incident when the busdriver hit a car that stopped for red light which ended the car drivers life and 4 other pedestrians...
It´s quite hiliarious actually when you think of the degrees required to get a job in this country, but driving a bus and truck , doesn´t require anything and their are the ones responsible for much of the accidents in the local traffic.
Then you have the pickup driver who has nothing to lose and pass you even in a curve... and once he sees there comes a car on the opposite side of the road he highlight flashes the other car the get out of the way...

And then we have the motorbike who doesn´t believe in the leftside rule anymore, perhaps they wanna adopt western rules by driving on the right side... I don´t know how many times I almost hit a motorbike coz he was driving on the wrong side of the road, didn´t look and was chatting to his passenger..

To be honest as I said before this whole thing needs to be revaluated, Thais are among the worst drivers in the world, and you can blame all on government. One can blame them for being careless and they contribute to the increasing numbers in accidents but most of thai drivers have no common sense or logic how to drive and some simply don´t care...

Hi Profiler , the total lunacy which infects road safety in Thailand arrives every April were gangs of drunken maniacs stand roadside, were they have hijacked the beautiful age old Thai custom into some sort of Ramboesque annual ritual to subject passing motor cyclist,s and car drivers to a face full of dirty water and stinging balsamic powder causing many accidents whilst the "upholders" of the law merely look on in merriment , i just wonder if this sort of totally insane behaviour is allowed any where else on the planet.

[Ian]

"And then we have the motorbike who doesn´t believe in the leftside rule anymore, perhaps they wanna adopt western rules by driving on the right side"

Someone else who does not accept Britain as being western

I think the problem is Thais get confused by videos they see Americans driving on the right and think this is the correct way to drive.

This is an interesting article, I particularly liked the comment about Pakistan and camels

http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/ ... 20left.htm

[Veto]

Have you ever checked out http://www.darwinawards.com ?
Thru the process of natural selection, "nature" culls the herd. You have to have done something truly stupid...and died....in order to receive a Darwin Award. There is honorable mention for those who did stupid stuff and almost died.
Hilarious stuff and true.

Hi Veto, the big problem with that line of thought is that just as many innocent people here in Thailand are "culled" through the actions of the stupid.

RE: Duly noted!
I was following the title and not the vocabulary. Noting that awards officially go out to "Death by Stupidity"
Seems a recent reincarnate has mysteriously disappeared...again....M.I.A.
Is it death by stupidity? or

[Sean Moran]

It is another one of those confusingly entitled threads but it appears to relate to the death of a 12 year old child in a traffic malfunction recently. Google Issac Newton for more details.

[Profiler]

"And then we have the motorbike who doesn´t believe in the leftside rule anymore, perhaps they wanna adopt western rules by driving on the right side"

Someone else who does not accept Britain as being western

I think the problem is Thais get confused by videos they see Americans driving on the right and think this is the correct way to drive.

This is an interesting article, I particularly liked the comment about Pakistan and camels

http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/ ... 20left.htm

My bad

Sweden had left side traffic till 1954 I think ... It was then we realized it was a bad idea

[stilljustbrowsing]

I note some posters have said road infrastructure is not important to this subject, OK.
The village in which I live is on the north-bound side of the Viphavadi Rangsit road. For those that don't know this road the quantity of total lanes varies from six to twelve depending on location, not to mention the elevated tollway comprising of a total of six lanes. Input tollway entrances and exits, "U"- turn bridges and we have a receipe for a nightmare. The U-turn exits are in the farside (right) lane when most people taking the U-turn want to get to the next exit (near-side lane,(left) those already on the "frontage road" want to go straight ahead, which means those on the left side of the road need to move over to the right, and those on the right (U-turn exiters), need to get to the left side of the road.
Never mind, back to what I am trying to say. The village next door to me has a junction 5 meters away from the exit of my village, unfortunatly it requires a right turn to achieve that. (facing on-coming traffic IE, turn the wrong way)
Alternativelly, I can be a good boy, turn left out of my village, travel 2K's then do a loop 270degree turn, continue for 2 more K's, do a U turn, 2k's later take a left, (no choice), 5k's later I take another U turn, and 3k's after that turn left into the next village. (I am tired now, and am basicly back where I started )
Apart from the safety aspects of all this, given the global warming thing and costs of fuel, who in there right mind is going to follow such proceedures?

[villager]

Hey SJB your browsing ,s are well noted, but just what this has to do with 5 ten year old kids on ONE motorcycle riding at breakneck speed on the wrong side of the road at night with no lights, or some drunken maniac throwing the leavings of a buffalo wallow directly into the face of an approaching motor cyclist at Songkran , please do not make excuses for the behaviour of these total imbeciles who contribute to the carnage which is a daily occurrence on Thailands roads.

[stilljustbrowsing]

I am not making excuses for acts of wanton stupidity, sorry if it appears as such.
The points made by you and others speak for themselves. The kid that just rode into a major road without looking, so sad!
Had he been taught some semblance of forethought, perhaps it may never have happened, and please don't tell me he should not have been riding the motorcycle in the first place, that has already crossed my mind but may be subject to a diffrent discussion.
Five kids on a bike, absolute lunacy, no lights, wrong way, why were they not educated about basic safety? (parental responsibility perhaps, but do they actually live with their parents?)
The idi..ot throwing dung? He should be suspended by his balls untill his ears drop off.
So we get back to education, situational awareness and common sense.

[stilljustbrowsing]

The Isle of Mann is represented by three legs, what on earth does that mean?

[prommee_NE]

I was only backing up SJB with the points about infrastructure, rather than saying that this was the most important issue. The last paragraph in my post said that the main thing was education. However, trying to educate people on road safety when there is an obvious lack of safety awareness in the road building is an issue.

Looking back to how I was educated in road safety...I think the biggest single factor was the government sponsored road safety broadcasts during the adverts. Those who were in England in the 60's and 70's may remember the "Look Signal Manouevre" , the "Green Cross Code" the "Suicide lane" the "Pedestrian vs Driver" clips (Plenty more I can't remember off hand...Helmet and Clunk Click etc). All were very informative and were backed up by questions asking what was wrong in a particular situation (with prizes). this was then backed up further by introducing bicycle proficiency tests at school.

It would be good to see a government sponsored road safety awareness programme introduced in Thailand. Currently lots of studies are done and lots of statistics taken...money may be better spent with these informative broadcasts.