The numbers from the "Seven Dangerous Days" campaign to make the holiday highways safer are discouraging -- but predictable. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, along with police, government and military authorities settled a long-standing argument. Many had believed that strong enforcement would cause a dramatic change, both in driving habits and in results.
In the short term, they were proved wrong.
The belated but harsh enforcement of traffic laws, especially for drink-driving, had no discernible effect on holiday road safety. More people died and were injured in more traffic crashes in the seven-day period than last year. This was despite the impounding of thousands of motorcycles and hundreds of cars and the detention of their scofflaw drink-drivers.
Official figures released by the Road Safety Centre offer discouraging news. Figures showed the number of road accidents, the toll of dead and injured all are 12% to 13% higher than last year.
Massive publicity, tough words from the government and even adding the army to highway police duty failed to bring down any holiday toll.
There will inevitably be those who argue in coming days that the only problem over the New Year's holiday was that there was not enough enforcement. They have a minor point, but in the main they are wrong. Harsh enforcement against dangerous drivers, whether drunken or not, must be a year-round effort. Impounding vehicles until the offending drivers complete jail sentences, community projects or re-licensing should be adopted immediately as national policy.
But spot checks and checkpoints, followed by a strong and punitive legal system, make up just one part of the effort necessary to bring down the highway death toll. The country has almost the worst road-safety record in the world, and there are not enough police to catch all errant drivers, nor enough cells to detain them. While it is time to increase the pressure on dangerous drivers, at least two other areas require equal or more attention.
The first is drivers' education. As of now, about 116 years after the first motorcar was brought to Thailand, no regularised system exists for new drivers to learn about driving. The government "programme" -- really the wrong word -- is to present a book covering rules of the road. Anyone memorising enough of that will probably get a driver's licence, probably better called a licence to endanger others. Private companies claiming to be driving schools almost all aim only at somehow getting licences for their clients, and again with little or no true education on what it means to be a good driver.
Road rules are the bare beginning of good driving. Because cars, pickup trucks and motorcycles are so common, most advanced countries have taken drivers' education inside the regular education system. It is common to introduce such courses into school curricula by the eighth or ninth year, before the legal driving age. The main courses cover courtesy and common sense.
A government serious about tackling the chilling road toll must also come out with better policies on road building.
Highways often are built to standards of the 1950s. A recent "safety measure" has seen authorities paint road surfaces bright red in particularly dangerous areas. This is not a bad idea, but it shows attention is focused on the short term, an easy "solution" to roads with built-in risks. In a short time, drivers will be used to the red paint and be back to the behaviour that causes deaths.
Policy must focus on preventing accidents with better planned roads, where head-on crashes are impossible. Better signage and road markings can help but there is no alternative to redesigning dangerous roads.