Points system won’t solve horrific road death toll
There has been unusual interest in highway safety recently. Now the police plan to use a points system used in other countries such as the United States.
The goal is to drop down from the world’s top spot for highway deaths, an admirable goal, but maybe unreachable. Here are two reasons why:
First, I have seen no evidence of a real capacity (or willingness) to enforce against the most egregious highway offences. Police stand in groups along the side of the road and wave people over for lack of a helmet, being in the wrong lane and other relatively minor offences. But without radio and radar-equipped police cars, computers in those cars and other modern equipment as well as an expectation of better results, the most egregious offences, like speeding, go unchallenged. People on big bikes and the cars popular with the wealthy can just drive away without consequences – and they know it!
Second, during a class project at my university, we learned that 78 per cent of all deaths on the highway involve motorcycles, mostly small ones. Accidents resulting in maiming, if not death, must be very high, too. But, in an oligarchy with a huge percentage of poor people, motorbikes are deeply entrenched in the Thai economy. Almost every village has scooter dealers. These small motorcycles cannot just be outlawed and taken away, although that is the best solution to excessive highway deaths.
I claim no easy solution, except to say that this is a central characteristic of oligarchical societies around the world.
John Kane
