Word: bangkok
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sometimes, the luckiest. At an intersection of Bangkok's busy Pattanakarn Road in June, the driver of a gray Hilux pickup lost patience waiting for an interminable red light and attempted a quick U-turn into oncoming traffic. He was rammed by a Toyota sedan; the impact spun one vehicle into six motorcycles whose riders were waiting at the light, while the other was propelled into two other motorcyclists turning into Pattanakarn Road. Although nine people were injured, no one died. Others have not been so fortunate. "This road is the worst," says Sommai Nutang, a 46-year-old truck...
...country's authorities are trying to bring the national accident rates down to the level of many Western countries. (With an average of 36 deaths a day, Thailand ranks sixth in the world in road fatalities, according to the WHO.) Workers at the center, located in government offices in Bangkok, collate reports of casualties coming in from police, hospitals and rescue workers around the country. The war room is also the staging area for the various programs established to make highways safer, particularly during holiday periods when fatalities spike. The government earlier this year set up extra checkpoints...
...blotter on his dark wooden desk, he traces a faint crease in his skin running from his left temple down to the corner of his mouth. "Thirty-four stitches," he says, then spreads his jaws and taps his upper teeth. "Not real." The scars are reminders of a 1988 Bangkok accident in which Nikorn's car was sideswiped by a drunken 18-year-old driving a pickup truck...
...Nikorn isn't expecting his campaign to win easy victories. The causes of accidents are so varied?poor roadway design, unsafe vehicles, and human error among them. There are no quick-fix solutions. Yordphol Tanaboriboon, a transportation-engineering professor at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, says one of the few generalizations that can be made is that the high proportion of motorcycles on Thailand's roads (of the country's 26 million registered vehicles, 12 million are two-wheelers; according to Nikorn, there are another 6 million unregistered motorcycles) is linked to a higher death rate. As many...
...This fatalism is mirrored in Asia's motoring society as a whole. Bangkok-based professor Yordphol says many Thai motorists believe that no matter how defensively they drive, their fate is predetermined. "We are trying to persuade them that accidents are not an act of God," Yordphol says, "that you can avoid them if you are careful, obey the laws, and not speed or drive under the influence...