UK group funds roundabout at deadly Phuket spot
Play
The UK-based non-profit Safer Roads Foundation will fund the construction of a roundabout at Phuket's deadly Narisorn-Surin intersection in a bid to reduce accidents.
The southern island province had 108 road deaths last year and is in Thailand’s top five provinces for road casualties over the past decade.
The Narisorn-Surin intersection in Muang district has claimed five lives this year while 36 others have been injured.
After the Safer Roads Foundation offered to help prevent road carnage at a key location in the province, the Phuket Network for Road Accident Prevention came up with this project, Phuket police chief Maj-General Theerapol Thipcharoen said.
The roundabout was designed by a Phuket Rotary Club of Tongkah architect and approved by Prince of Songkla University Professor Pichai Taneerananon. It will be built by Nakhon Phuket Municipality at a cost of Bt2.8 million.
The roundabout will provide motorists with enhanced visibility, while its aluminium-composite frame will be durable and will require low maintenance.
The globe frame will comprise small octagonal shapes and there are meanings associated with it.
“Octagonal” suggests the unity involved in the project; the round shape represents an Andaman pearl, which is Phuket’s nickname; while the overall look resembles the pattern of a turtle back, signifying longevity.
Phuket’s public and private sectors have initiated a number of measures to try and reduce the number of accidents in the province. The 108 deaths last year are marked improvement on previous years when about 200 deaths a year was typical.
The measures included the repairing of 20 accident-prone road sections from 2008 to 2011 and a serious campaign for people to wear helmets on motorcycles in 2011.
The Phuket office of Road Safety Thai said in August the ratio for the number of people in Phuket injured in traffic accidents was 4,952 per 100,000 people, while the death toll was 72 per 100,000 people.
About a third of road accident casualties were linked to drink driving, and Theerapol admitted that police in the provinces didn’t have enough breathalysers.
The other leading factors associated with road accidents are speeding, reckless driving and accident-prone spots.
Theerapol praised the Safer Roads Foundation, which has been working hard to try and reduce road accidents in 31 countries.
He said the foundation had also donated more than Bt1 million for provincial traffic police division to buy 39 breathalysers in July, resulting in a crackdown on drink driving.
He said of the 4,952 motorists stopped at checkpoints in October and November, 416 were arrested for drink driving – a big improvement on previous years. Police arrested 140 drink drivers in 2012, 323 drink drivers in 2013 and another 341 drink drivers in 2014.
On Wednesday, Phuket Governor Chamroen Tippayapongthada received the design of the roundabout from Safer Roads Foundation president Michael C Woodford at Phuket City Hall.
More than 14,000 Thais and foreigners are killed in road accidents on average every year, with the country third worst in the World Health Organisation’s 2013 world rankings for road deaths.
