The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged Thailand to strengthen the enforcement of traffic regulations to improve road safety.
Even though the country has some of the best accident prevention laws in the region, they are not being enforced, according to Ho Yong Kim, the UN agency's representative in Thailand.
For example, she said, while most communities have a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour, it is seldom obeyed by motorists.
As well, the seatbelt law does not cover back-seat passengers, especially children, and only 27% of the people comply with the motorcycle crash helmet law, she said.
She also appealed to law enforcement authorities to increasingly clamp down on drunk driving.
In its Global Status Report on Road Safety 2009, the WHO reported that Thailand had 12,492 road traffic fatalities, or a ratio of 19.6 deaths per 100,000 people. That placed the country 73rd among 177 countries and territories surveyed. Eritrea topped the list with a ratio of 48.4.
Dr Wittaya Chartbanchachai, the head of the provincial accident prevention committee, said the WHO data gave a clear indication that Thailand was not very serious about reducing traffic accidents, even though it had previously planned a Road Safety Promotion Decade (2011-2020) campaign.
Many drivers still fail to follow the traffic laws, he said.
Dr Wittaya called for the government to allocate more funding to raise the safety standard on roads, tunnels and bridges. There were still many dangerous routes, mainly in the North, where there are many accidents.
The rate of traffic-related deaths in the country is relatively high and campaigns to address this must be carried out at the provincial level for improved safety to be successful at the national level.
"The first thing that must be done is to upgrade the accident database so that it is more accurate in order to raise the public awareness," said Dr Wittaya.
There are still inconsistencies between the official figures and those reported by the media, he added.
The most recent Thai National Status Report on Road Safety was compiled in 2011 as recommended by WHO. It showed that the three provinces with the highest number of traffic-related deaths per 100,000 people were Chanthaburi (67.79), followed by Nakhon Pathom (48.93) and Ubon Ratchathani (44.55).
When the severity of accidents is gauged, measured from the number of deaths relative to the total number of people involved, Nakhon Nayok has the worst record, followed by Prachuap Khiri Khan and Samut Songkhram.