Bangkok – The Traffic Police Division is in consultation with Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to seek ways to lower the number of road accidents in Bangkok.
The discussion will focus on speed limit management to prevent and reduce traffic risk factors. Participants will also look into successful campaigns addressing road safety in different countries and exchange experience and studies on road crash statistics.
Commander of the traffic police Pol Maj Gen Theerasak Suriwong said some 76 percent of all traffic fatalities in the country resulted from drink-driving, excessive speed and traffic rule violations, with about 23 percent resulting from vehicle and road conditions and the remaining one percent from environment-related factors.
Statistics over several years past indicate that 54-56 people are killed in road accidents a day in Thailand on average. The figures correspond with the World Health Organization’s report which estimates the number of traffic casualties in the country at 20,000 per year, the second highest in the world after Libya.
Traffic police recommend that motorists limit their driving speed to a maximum 80 kilometers per hour when in public places as allowed by the law. They expect to address many risk factors in a determined bid to lower the number of road accidents in the capital city by 50 percent by 2020.
