A police constable summed up the situation perfectly after tough enforcement failed to stem the New Year’s holiday road slaughter. “People are absolutely not getting the message,” the constable told reporters from a TV news station. In Toronto.
The attempt to force or shame drivers into safe conduct was, as the internet puts it, a FAIL. But as Canadian Pol Const Clint Stibbe’s interview showed, it wasn’t only Thailand where drivers refused to stop drinking, stop speeding and, to put it in a phrase, stop acting like jackasses behind the wheel ... or, perhaps more accurately (because motorcycles were involved in more than 83% of the 3,379 serious accidents from Dec 29 to Jan 4), holding the handlebars.
Canada has cut road fatalities drastically, with years — decades — of extremely focused and unceasing effort, of which impounding cars and arresting suspects is only a tiny part.
Yet last Dec 28, without a lick of logic, a perception arose in Thailand that putting troops on the streets and highways to help police seize thousands of vehicles, the bloodshed would stop. Rub a lamp.
Today, although a few stubborn holdouts believe that just a little more impounding and prison sentencing will stop the slaughter, most people should have learned last week that there is no magic solution, no instant cure and especially no single dose of elixir to cure the Thai highway carnage — “should have” being the operative phrase.
US President Obama passes by Gen Prayut at the 10th East Asia Summit during the 27th ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Nov 22, 2015. (EPA photo)
By coincidence, Thailand and America have demonstrated yet again how similar they are at the core. Many may still misunderstand or even dispute the theory that the leaders and people of the two nations so very often act virtually identically. Yet, once again last week there were Mr Obama and Gen Prayut scratching at the overwhelming desire to Do Something about their big problem of the day.
In both cases, what they did pleased all their supporters and some of their opponents. In both cases, if they had acted earlier, what they did would have affected nothing — nothing about gun control in the US, nothing about traffic deaths on the seven dangerous Thai days just concluded.
Mr Obama believes it may be more difficult now to obtain guns to carry out future mass shootings like the one in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in which six teachers and 20 children died and made him cry. Truth: if he had acted five years ago, his new rules would not have affected that mass shooting.
Gen Prayut’s high-level response to the New Year road slaughter was to order a ban on new licences for the growing brigades of double-decker buses. If only he had done that a month before ... nothing would have happened. The holiday road toll would have been exactly the same: 380 dead, 3,505 injured.
The US and Thai leaders proclaim, and their supporters preach that, “if it saves even one life ...”. This is not a terrible slogan. It must be recognised as feel-good rhetoric, however. It could equally be stated as: “Just one more bit of pressure on law-abiding people may stop the criminals.”
In the US, President Obama’s new decrees will actually have close to zero effect on gun purchases. In Thailand’s case, it’s far from clear that the general prime minister’s decision will even be put into effect. Rather powerful voices and influential figures seem certain to delay the “immediate” end of those swaying double deckers, and the delay could prove open-ended.
Either way, the US still is faced with the near certainty, as close as “damn” is to swearing, that more people will die in mass shootings. Double deckers or not, Thailand is faced with the near certainty, as probable as yet another corruption scandal, that the highways will continue their role as metaphors for abattoirs and graveyards.
Holiday highways might be safer in Thailand in years, or more likely decades. Maybe. But the past Seven Dangerous Days proved they won’t get that way just by lining the roads with troops and checkpoints. Thousands of drink-drivers killed hundreds of people. They weren’t even checked, and there are not enough troops and police to check them.
Good drivers, sober drivers and courteous drivers, are not born. They are made. Now, no one makes them, including the junta and its army.
The general prime minister’s still uncertain ban on double-decker buses may spare lives down the road (no pun intended), but it will not make a dent in the annual road slaughter. As surely as criminals and madmen will obtain guns and shoot innocent people in the US and around the world, so drinkers and bad drivers will continue to kill and maim innocent Thais on our highways.
It is impossible to stop all of this. Stopping most of it is possible, but as Canada’s Pol Const Stibbe says, some people won’t listen.