Driving in LOS

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jxxxl said:

I remember reading somewhere that Thailand had the second highest road fatality rate in the world. Scary.

Interesting, since I see far more accidents back in Las Vegas (now THOSE idiots cannot drive!!) than I do here in BKK.

 

So I wanted to look into it further. Thailand looks to be not even in the top 10 per these 1999 stats (latest I could find).

 

#1. - United States - 15.5 deaths per 100,000 people

#2. - Belgium - 15.4 deaths per 100,000 people

#3. - New Zealand - 14 deaths per 100,000 people

#4. - France - 13.7 deaths per 100,000 people

#5. - Italy - 12.9 deaths per 100,000 people

#6. - Ireland - 11.6 deaths per 100,000 people

#7. - Austria - -10.4 deaths per 100,000 people

#8. - Australia - 10 deaths per 100,000 people

#9. - Germany - 9.8 deaths per 100,000 people

#10. - Canada - 9.6 deaths per 100,000 people

 

But I dunno if these stats are only for passenger cars or any road death (which would include pedistrians, motorcycles, trucks & busses). I suspect the former.

 

+++++

 

Looking further, I found this document (link is a PDF), with some neat but again dated (1996) graphed data that includes ALL road fatalities. They had stats in two flavours: deaths per 100,000 population and deaths per 10,000 motor vehicles. Which is more relavent to this discussion, rate or risk? No idea, tho' I say rate, and cannot be arsed to figured it out. Anyone?

 

Per this paper: Results show that the highest fatality rates (deaths per 10,000 motor vehicles) worldwide occur in African countries, particularly Ethiopia (195), Uganda (122) and Malawi (193) whilst fatality risk (deaths/100,000 population) is highest in a disparate group of countries including Thailand (28), So. Korea (28), Malaysia (31), Swaziland (31), South Africa (27) and Syria (36).

 

Thailand's death rate/10K vehicles was only 9.

 

So like any metric, JXXL's "Thailand is second worst in the world" is only partially true. Depends upon what you count.

 

Another case of "lies, damn lies and statistics."

 

Cheers,

SD

[jxxxl]

Just my gut feeling here....

 

In terms of accidents involving autos & autos, in spite of the idiocy I see on the roads here, I remember seeing more accidents in the US than here. Of course, being from Socal, there's a lot more cars on the roads.

 

However, given the huge number of motorbikes here, and the types of people riding them (e.g., insane teenagers and everyone else who can't afford/drive a car), I see FAR more accidents (most fatal) betwen car and bike than back in the US. I've seen a lot of road kills in my two years living here. This didn't keep me from putting 22,000 kms on my bike last year. ::

[OCgringo]

Its amazing how FEW of the motorbikes crash every day ,

 

They drive like crazy , each stoplight is a drag race start , throw a few extra passangers on your bike and its a normal LOS day ,

 

also for these numbers are Tuk Tuk cars or bikes ?

 

OC

[shygye]

I found this,

 

China referred to as ?one of the highest country rates..? (p35)? 15.6 per 100,000 deaths. This

compares to Thailand 20.9 and Republic of Korea 22.7.

 

However, I view the death rate per 10000 vehicles as a better indicator of risk.

 

Traffic

 

[color:"blue"] The United States, working with other Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries, will help Thailand develop, implement, and maintain a new, reliable system for collecting data on crashes. The goal is to reduce nonreporting or underreporting of traffic incidents.

 

The rapidly increasing number of motor vehicles in Thailand and the rate of traffic fatalities underscore the importance of improving traffic-safety data. Between 1987 and 1997, the number of registered vehicles nearly quadrupled, from 5 million to 18 million. In addition, more than 13,000 people are killed and 70,000 injured in crashes annually, according to the Thai government. These totals, however, may not reflect the full extent of the problem, given the limited scope of Thailand's current system for collecting crash data. [/color]

[ThaiHome]

I think the Songkran death toll so highly publicized is very misleading. Something like 80% of the deaths are from 18-30 year old males driving/riding motos drunk. If they didn't die that week, chances are they would die the next one or the one after. Many people are doomed and it is just a matter of time.

Has far as automobile driving, I found China by far the worse (though other people would say India). In fact, in the countryside, I think even Malaysia is worse then Thailand. It is really only helped by the fact they have more modern limited access roads across the country then Thailand.

I do have to ask the people the say things about how crazy Thailand drivers are if they have ever driven in any other non-western country (or even visited one)

TH

[Guest lazyphil]

driving in los is stressful.....is that whining?

[whosyourdaddy]

Thailand 28/100,000... second worse in Asia

 

Many of those countries that you listed have something called WINTER. God forbid if the roads here ever iced over. It would be genocide!

 

http://www.factbook.net/A&PStats.htm