The motorbike has long been a popular mode of transport in Asia because it's cheaper than a car and can zip through traffic-clogged cities faster. Over half of all global motorbike sales of around 50 million units per year are in Asia and two-thirds of the people of driving age in the four top markets (India, China, Indonesia and Vietnam) own bikes.
Despite its popularity, this mode of transport is also the most deadly. Here in Thailand, some 24,000 people are estimated to die on the roads every year -- road deaths per 100,000 population are the world's second-highest, behind only Libya -- and 73% of those deaths involve motorcycles. Sadly, this comes as no surprise to anyone who lives in Bangkok.
"If you take motorcycles out of the equation, Thailand's roads will be as safe as [those in] Switzerland, the US and the UK," Liviu Vedrasco, the World Health Organisation (WHO) health cluster chief in Bangkok, told The Sunday Times in May 2017, and I couldn't agree more.
Speaking from personal experience as someone who usually rides a motorbike taxi every other day, I am scared for my own life. Running one red light is routine, but there are some drivers who will do their utmost to get from A to B without ever stopping, no matter how many lights are in the way or what colour they are.
"I'm going to work. I'm not in a hurry to die," is what I have to remind some drivers as we approach the dreaded ha yaek intersection near the Bangkok Post office. I carry my own helmet even though I don't own a bike, as I want to make sure I can get home safely to my family, but what about other people? Should it be left to each of us as individuals to ensure our personal safety, or can we work together as a society so that everyone can be safer together? Or am I being too idealistic?
Let's start with the basics such as riding against the traffic. Do we really have to convince people that this is a bad idea? It is clearly against the law but why do people turn a blind eye when we see it happen? There is a social responsibility to condemn this when you see it because there are not enough police officers to go around to arrest these idiots.
In the Netherlands, there is something called the "Dutch Reach", which is a method of opening a car door with the hand farthest from the handle, so in a right-hand driving country like Thailand, this involves the left hand of the driver, or right hand of the passenger. This effectively forces you to twist your body and look over your shoulder to see whether a cyclist or motorcyclist is approaching.
The method is taught to children in schools and by their parents in the Netherlands and is also part of the driving test because it can save lives. But how well would it work in Bangkok, where a motorcyclist can approach from any direction, regardless of what road signs might say?
What would happen in such a case if the person opening the door was a child or an elderly person and the bike was coming fast? What would happen if I opened the door too hard and one of the passengers on the bike was a child?
Thaejing Siripanit, secretary-general of the Don't Drive Drunk Foundation in Thailand, told the Bangkok Post in December that many Thais are "well aware of the laws but simply ignore them". Pongsak Putta, a motorcycle taxi driver who was hit by a car and injured over the new year, told the BBC: "There is a saying, that a true Thai follows his own rules". We cannot allow this to become a norm that we have to accept.
The mentality that "as long as it does not happen to me, then it's okay" is dangerous and people have to be more aware of safety. The authorities can only do so much, as we can see from the high number of road deaths every Songkran and New Year. Maybe it's time for all of us to remind the younger generations that, for example, it's okay to walk instead of dying from being too lazy to make a U-turn.
One thing to remember for Thais is that every year, about 15,800 of our children are involved in motorcycle-related accidents and around 700 of them die. We can all stop this statistic together.