As disgustingly high as Thailand's road death toll is, the laws are often willfully disregarded and any sense of safety, patience or respect are flagrantly discarded. The evidence for this would be clear to anyone who has even walked past a road in this country, but a particularly chilling example surfaced last week that showed exactly how deadly a lack of consideration can be.
Without giving details of when or where the accident occurred, a doctor spoke out about a gunshot victim who died while being transferred between hospitals. The ambulance was involved in a crash after a motorist failed to let it pass. The crash resulted in a paramedic sustaining serious injuries and the patient dying. The victim had a chance of living had he arrived at the provincial hospital and received the surgery needed, and the doctor placed the blame squarely on the selfish driver who blocked the ambulance's path.
Given how often ambulances can be seen stuck behind cars that fail to give way or in intersections where the drivers refuse to pause because they have the green light, this probably happens more often than we know. It took a doctor's impassioned story to arouse even a ripple of awareness, and this in itself is an indictment of a society that become appallingly blase about road trauma.
To those who would fail to give way for ambulances, ask yourselves whether you would block its path if you knew your mother, father, family member, friend or even your dentist was in the back. If you were unfortunate enough to be in critical condition requiring speedy transport to a hospital, you would be hoping everyone else on the road would get out of the way.
In Bangkok, the traffic is often so bad that even with the best of intentions drivers will not be able to let ambulances pass. Easing congestion is fraught with difficulty, but one answer is to better equip ambulances and train paramedics — it will take investment, time and training, but establishing a fleet of intensive-care ambulances to replace the modified vans that transport patients would go a long way toward saving lives.
Those who responded to the doctor's story were largely supportive of his call for drivers to show more consideration. Others, however, were critical of ambulances, and other emergency service vehicles, that flash their lights for no good reason. Such criticism is not without foundation — there have been examples of emergency services using their lights for no other purpose than to get through heavy traffic — but it is undeniably a selfish one. Seeing a policeman on a motorcycle riding the wrong way along a soi to get to a noodle stand is no reason to ignore the flashing lights and blaring sirens of a fire truck that's clearly in a hurry.
Apart from illustrating a lack of empathy and consideration among road users, the case also pointed to the disturbing lack of concern over Thailand's deadly roads among authorities and society in general. In other places, the death of a man as a result of an accident involving an ambulance would be cause for a scandal, at the very least a coronial inquiry that could be subject to public scrutiny. But it barely made a blip, because here such shocking road incidents are only a minor variation of the tragedies repeated dozens of times daily nationwide, leaving more than 26,000 people dead last year according to World Health Organisation figures.
The fact the carnage happens every day is the reason we have become immune to the horror of it. We have come to accept a situation that should be unacceptable. But the very fact deaths are occurring with such frequency should be alarming, and governments of all stripes should make the issue a national priority.
This newspaper previously challenged former transport minister Chadchart Sittipunt to lower the Songkran road death tolls, to set annual targets, and focus on drink-driving, motorcycles and seat belts. Since the coup, the only challenge Mr Chadchart has been in a position to take up has involved a bucket of ice, so it falls to the new regime to pick up the task of spreading the road-safety message and enforcing the law.
But road safety cannot simply be imposed from on high. The soldiers in charge, being soldiers, will approach such issues thinking people will take orders willingly. Citizens, being human beings, will not take kindly to being told what to do forever and many will be willfully disobedient.
On the roads, there will always be a minority of drunk drivers, hot-headed racers and downright idiots. It falls to the rest of us to be more patient, focused on safety and considerate of others to bring the death toll down. The life you save may be your own.