Road safety group blames "bad roads" for Thailand's high road-death toll
....and it is completely insane that they would come to this conclusion rather than facing what the real problem is.
Thailand routinely ranks in the top three in the world for road deaths per 100,000 people of all countries in the world but not to be satisfied with silver or bronze, they almost always are number one in road fatalities for motorcycles of any country in the world.
As someone that has lived here for a while, the suggestion that this is somehow the product of bad road design is just insulting and stupid.
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While I haven't been everywhere in Thailand, I have been to enough of it to know that the roads are actually quite good for a developing country. I would say for the most part that the roads in Thailand are actually quite a lot better than most of the roads I have ever driven on in USA.
This is just another example of government wanting to point the finger at someone else when they know damn well what the real reason is for the level of road deaths in Thailand.
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Speed limits are irrelevant
For one thing, the above sign and thousands of others like it that are posted all over the country are a waste of the metal that they are printed on. If you see a red circle with a 60 in the middle of it in Thailand, that means the speed limit is 60 km / hour... but it may as well say 9,000 miles / hour because nobody cares. There is almost no speed enforcement of any sort in this country. I'm not saying there is none, because there is some. However it is so extremely rare that anyone ever gets a ticket for speeding that nobody has any fear at all if they decide to double or even triple the speed limit. Basically, everyone just drives as fast as they can all the time.
I have heard of one person that I know ever getting a speeding ticket and it was for egregiously breaking the speed limit. He was doing more than double the speed limit and when the cops got him, the ticket was blanket fee of 500 Baht (around $17) and they were laughing with him about how he got the highest speed of the day! Then they issued him a ticket and pointed out that this ticket means that he can not get another speeding ticket for 3 days.
Do you see how stupid this is? If you were driving double the speed limit in most western countries not only would the not have a laugh about it and definitely wouldn't give you a 3-day pass to do whatever you want but there is a good chance you are going to lose your license and possibly even go to jail for a while. Which brings me to my next point.
Driving licenses are irrelevant
While some people go through the process of getting a driving license, there are currently 21 million registered motorbikes in Thailand and there have only been 11 million motorbike driving licenses issued. I'm sure there is a collector here and there that has more than one scooter, but you don't have to be a trigonometry teacher to figure out that there are millions of unlicensed people on the roads out there.
Not that having a license necessarily means anything though because when I went to go get my motorbike license the test was stupidly easy and even if you failed they let you take it again until you pass. There was also virtually no road test. I just cruised around the parking lot for a few minutes (on the scooter I drove there without a license) and then he waved me in and we were done. I have never had to retake a written or road skills test in the years I have been here.
People don't wear helmets
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In certain big city areas they sporadically enforce helmet "laws" but for the most part this country is a free-for-all on the roads. While we can't really blame this on the government but rather the idiocy of the person not interested in protecting their own skull, it is crazy to me that when they know damn well that vast majority of motorcycle deaths are because of head trauma, the safety group wants to blame the roads.
Even the helmets themselves aren't going to help you at all
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This is the type of helmet you see on the heads of people more often than not. This cheap piece of plastic is about the same thickness your average peanut butter lid and the interior, if it has any padding at all, is something that would immediately shatter if you were to simply fall over, let alone get hit by something.
Virtually no roaming enforcement of anything
If you ever get a ticket for anything in Thailand, this is most likely going to happen at a checkpoint.
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These are easily identified and always seem to occur in exactly the same place and normally at the same time of the month right after everyone has gotten their monthly pay. These checkpoints are not about enforcing anything, but rather, to take cash from the population and put it into the pockets of the corrupt police force.
Even when they can't get you for any infraction I still see a load of people either turn around when they see the checkpoint, park and pretend they are shopping somewhere near the checkpoint, or pull their helmet out of the basket in front of them to put it on their head just long enough to get through the checkpoint... then it goes straight back in the basket.
At the end of all this it would have been better if this road safety group had simply said nothing rather than try to blame the high death rate that to anyone that lives here is clearly not the problem. The problem is that we have a country of dangerous drivers on the road and no enforcement of any sort of road rules. I'm not saying that I want this country to end up like USA or Australia where you are worried all the time that you are going to accidentally break some sort of law, but it would be nice if they would at least do something.
If they are going to continue doing nothing I am actually ok with that too. I drive very carefully and stay out of potential accident prone areas because of this. I also wear a helmet but not because I am afraid of getting a ticket for not doing so. I actually kind of enjoy having a head.
It is important to note that the road safety group that came up with this nonsensical excuse is a Thailand-based group and therefore they are probably afraid to point out the obvious or are paid to not do so. If you live over here for just a short amount of time it doesn't take long to realize that the roads are definitely not to blame.