Songkran Holiday Road Accidents

[PeteC]

I believe the 7 deadly days start tomorrow and run through the 18th. We'll post up the stats when they're published.

[Big Boy]

A bit late when they've been showing completely clogged roads going out of Bangkok on Thai news since Friday.

Mind you, I left home early on Saturday because of the news to travel to Ratchaburi. I've never known daytime traffic to be so light. Maybe the news channels are showing clogged up roads from their archives.

[buksida]

Petchkasem Road was a car park down here on Saturday - southbound lanes solid for as far as you could see. Luckily, we don't have to go anywhere near it for the next week.

[PeteC]

They were showing the roads north out of Bangkok enroute to Korat on what I saw. Mitrapap highway is the gauge they seem to use each holiday migration to Isan.

[Scout]

Petchkasem Road was a car park down here on Saturday - southbound lanes solid for as far as you could see. Luckily, we don't have to go anywhere near it for the next week.

I drove from Kanchanaburi to Hua Hin yesterday, arrived back to Hua Hin around 1pm. The traffic was extremely heavy most of the way and in Hua Hin. looked to be heavy both north and especially southbound.

[PeteC]

We'll have confusion with the numbers as we did on the January New Year thread. I'll be posting stats/charts as published by the Bangkok Post and their sources only, which has been from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation: www.disaster.go.th

Alternative numbers can be found at the Thai RSC site: https://www.thairsc.com/

I don't think we ever came to a firm conclusion as to why the numbers are different, but I think we surmised that it has something to do with insurance company counting vs government counting.

[handdrummer]

In the meantime, we drove from Golden Place to MV this afternoon, around 2:30 and the road was jammed. After the U-turn back to MV there was an accident. One Bangcocker ran into the back of another Bangcocker.

Surprisingly, MV wasn't crowded, maybe the hoi poloi were visiting BluePort.

[Big Boy]

The RSC number for yesterday was 79 deaths. I'm sure Pete will publish the 'official' numbers later.

[Big Boy]

LOL I've just seen the 'official' numbers. Boy, is somebody trying to make Thailand's road safety look squeaky clean. I'll let Pete post the numbers when they're published in English.

[buksida]

Is there any point wasting so much time sourcing and reposting all of these stats when they're obviously bullshit/government propaganda?

[PeteC]

This one is better as it's a portion of the RSC site in English: http://www.thairsc.com/eng/

It does state: "Data source : Traffic Accident Data collected from claims filed under Protection for Motor Vehicle Victmes Act. From RVP Company Limited in every province around Thailand."

So we can conclude, I think, that as we suspected their numbers are from insurance data.

[Big Boy]

I believe the RSC stats. Apart from the couple of deadly weeks they are used year round and are the stats used for everything else. I love to see the 'official' deadly week stats that show the Government's road safety schemes are working so well. They amuse me, nothing else.

There is very little sourcing to do. Whilst wanting to show what a fantastic job they are doing, the 'official' number are in your face.

[PeteC]

Well, as we've determined that the Gov stats are junk, I won't use up server space with photos of the chart. I'll just give the headline and link as we do with the BKP daily Covid story.

The http://www.thairsc.com/eng/ link is above, and anyone can go to it anytime they like.

[Big Boy]

That is the first time I've seen that link, thank you Pete. It is interesting to me as I've become a bit of a road accident anorak (Covid has affected us all in one way or another ). However, interesting as it is, I don't see a feed into yesterday's numbers. Is it there please? I prefer your link to my own, with that one exception.

[PeteC]

No idea. I just stumbled on to the English site with a google search for RSC Thailand.