Road Safety

[Jun]

I don't quite understand why Thailand makes no effort at all on the matter of road safety.

Take the topic of pedestrian crossings.

These are often ignored & they almost never have enforcement cameras.
In Pattaya, many of them only go half way across the road. Also, even where lights are installed, the painted markings may be several hundred metres away from those lights.
Also, the lights might be incorrectly set, so when the pedestrian light is green, the light for the traffic is also green. Such as the crossing immediately after the right turn for Jomtien beach.

In developed countries, I believe it's quite common to have RAISED pedestrian crossings these days. That's certainly what they do in the UK. So despite the better behaviour & more effective policing of our drivers, we also have additional measures in place to force them to slow down.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=htt ... AdAAAAABB6

[Gaybutton]

Unfortunately what happened to Barry Kenyon illustrates your point. No matter how careful you are and no matter how accustomed you are to safely cross roads in Pattaya as a pedestrian, drivers disregarding traffic laws, disregarding traffic courtesy, often driving drunk or on some sort of drug, and lack of effective enforcement creates serious risk even when you're doing everything right.

[Jun]

I would hope that Mr Kenyon's colleagues at The Pattaya Mail at least request a meeting with the local authorities to discuss improvement of pedestrian crossings. Like with raised crossings and traffic enforcement cameras.

Whether it does any good or not is another matter, but sometimes you just have to try.

[Gaybutton]

raised crossings

Do you think that would do much good? I see these people all the time - cars, pickup trucks, and motorbikes - just ignoring speed bumps, even larger ones, and just drive over them at full speed.

[Jun]

Do you think that would do much good? I see these people all the time - cars, pickup trucks, and motorbikes - just ignoring speed bumps, even larger ones, and just drive over them at full speed.

It depends on the profile of the speed bump.

If you have one of the small ones, say about 3" high, then the faster you drive over it, the less you notice, as your tyres absorb it. Assuming the car has sensible tyres. These are no use.

What Thailand needs is the bigger variety, with a height of at least six inches and a reasonably sharp ramp. Or better still enforcement cameras.

Most of the developed world proves that enforcing traffic regulations can work. Even Nha Trang in Vietnam had surprisingly civilised road traffic, although Saigon seems to be like a different country.

However, Thailand doesn't even try.