Safety paint used on dangerous Nan highway
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HIGHWAY No 1168 in Nan has become the country's first "red road" after being covered with special anti-skid light-reflective paint.
The move is a bid to reduce the number of road accidents during the so-called seven dangerous days of the New Year holiday period.
Nan Highway District 1 Office had workers on Wednesday paint five curve sections of the highway, each about 200 metres long, including at kilometre marker No 26 and kilometre markers 21 and 22.
The anti-skid paint coat is only 3-5 millimetres thick, so the sections painted were again ready for use in less than an hour later.
Nan Highway District 1 director Rangsan Sukrangsan said: “This winding two-lane highway has many dangerous curves, which lead to several accidents per month. Our office hired a contractor, Akhanay Graphic, to turn sections red with anti-skid paint, which we believe might help reduce accidents.”
He said warning signs were useless in getting motorists to slow down when approaching a curve but it was thought that the red paint, which is luminous at night, would work better.He said winter was the high season for Thais and foreign tourists visiting Nan, meaning there was more traffic.
Rangsan said the accident statistics before and after the sections were painted would be compared.
Kitkarn Inyanya, deputy chief of Nan Highway District 1’s engineering division, said the paint helped increase grip on the road surface, especially in rain.
He said that if the measure reduced accidents during the New Year period and Songkran next year, it would be expanded to all the dangerous road sections in Nan province.
