Quoted from the Phuket Gazette:
"PHUKET: The nationwide Seven Days of Danger road-safety campaign ended at midnight last night with three more deaths on Phuket’s roads than during last year's safety efforts, but far fewer accidents reported.
Nine deaths and 24 injuries in a total of 27 accidents were recorded by the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Phuket branch (DDPM-Phuket). Last year, six people died and 80 were reported injured in 75 accidents.
Though Phuket failed to meet its goal of zero road deaths during the campaign, it did achieve its other goal of decreasing the number of road accidents by at least five per cent.
The top causes of accidents and casualties were drunk driving, speeding and not wearing helmets, Phuket Governor Maitri Inthusut said once the campaign came to a close.
Gov Maitri vowed to improve public awareness about the need to wear helmets.
Eight of those who died during the campaign were on motorbikes at the time of the accident; only one was in a car.
Four deaths were attributed to losing control of the vehicle; three accidents involved a collision with a truck."
"Across all of Thailand, the death toll was a massive 365 people, with 3329 injured in 3176 crashes.
The death toll was up by 29, or 8.63 percent. Phuket was statistically much, much worse than that." :thumbdown:
Success?? or fail?? Who knows, your guess is as good as mine! How did your province do?
I would estimate 20% of Thais wear helmets & maybe 30% of farangs are wearing helmets. Driving on the wrong side of the road & jumping red lights are a regular problem, with tailgating & undertaking also a dangerous occurrence. To name but a few bad habits! Pot holes/bad road repaires & poorly maintained bikes/cars/trucks is a problem as well.
On average 13,000 people per year die on Thai roads.....To put into perceptive my home country of the UK with a similar population averages around 2,800 per year! The Uk rates at number 180 out of 192 countries, which is a surprise to me! :thumbup:
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/road-traffic-accidents/by-country
I was amazed when I stumbled across a website that rates Thailand as number 6 highest road accidents in the world, out of 192 rated countries!!! Safely nestled between Iran & Congo.
Basically folks keep your wits about you, don't get complacent riding on Thai roads.....let's hope these chilling stats aren't as high for 2013.
Good luck & safe riding