NONTHABURI – The Department of Disease Control (DDC) is calling upon teenagers to play an active role in the community accident prevention campaign, as the average number of teenager casualties have risen to an alarming rate of 5 deaths per day.
The DDC Director-General Amnuay Gajeena has said that the department is sponsoring a community campaign with the introduction of 200 checkpoints in 40 districts of 20 provinces. Teenagers aged between 15-19 years old are encouraged to participate in volunteering work at checkpoints, to help reduce accidents among people of their age group.
The director-general has cited statistics from the Ministry of Public Health’s Bureau of Policy and Strategy. During 2011-2014, casualties from road accidents were recorded at 57,926 persons. This figure averages on a yearly basis of 14,482 deaths, on a daily basis of 40 deaths, which is almost 2 deaths per hour.
Fatalities from road accident were also shown to be concentrated at the age group of 15-19 years, with an annual average of 1,687 persons or almost 5 deaths per day.
In order to prevent these accidents, the DDC chief will be focusing on persons aged between 15-19 years, as their vehicles of preference are motorcycles, with a usage rate of 83 percent. Furthermore, 87.2 percent of teenage motorcycle riders do not wear helmets and 23.9 percent are reported to be intoxicated with alchohol when accidents occurr.
Road accidents remain a major problem for Thailand. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the Kingdom as the 2nd country with the highest number of road accidents in the world, the highest country in Asia.
