Motorcyclists are easy prey for traffic police
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I rode down Srinakharin Road from Hua Mark to Ramkhamhaeng yesterday at 12.30pm and noticed the traffic police have gone back to setting up what seem to be shakedown check-stops on both sides of the road.
This time I saw many bikes parked on the road, but no riders. Where were they? It appeared that the police had taken them into the trees in an abandoned lot across the road to get money out of them.
Day after day I see police hiding on the roadside past flyovers and ticketing motorcyclists at Bt400 per head for using the overpass or not riding in the left-hand lane.
First, a motorbike is faster than a car in most cases, since traffic on many main roads is practically at a standstill most of the time. There is no excuse for not letting them use flyovers.
Second, keeping motorbikes in the left lane forces them to swerve out into faster traffic because the left lane is often blocked with parked cars, cars turning, police check-stops, etc.
Could there be a connection between this outdated law and the high rate of deadly motorbike accidents? I think so.
I believe the law is only there so the police can prey on the less privileged. Stop these dangerous checkpoints and make the traffic police help traffic, and not just from an air-conditioned box turning off the computerised traffic lights and running them on manual. I mean they should be in the street helping traffic and fining people for real offences, like blacked-out windows, talking on the phone, running red lights, blocking traffic and tailgating.
Dao Dao
