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Driving in Thailand |
 Land and Houses For Sale in Northern Thailand |
To put it as nicely as
possible, Thai peoples' driving skills leave much
to be desired. The items listed below are not an exercise in 'finding fault', but
rather they're a plea for improved road courtesy, awareness and safety.
For drivers in any region, it's always good to 'drive defensively'. In other words, drive as though other drivers may, at any moment, do outlandish things. In Thailand, it's good to drive 'double defensively'. Some of the quirky things that happen while driving in Thailand;
1. People drive on the wrong side of the road. I don't mean in the left lane, as that 's the agreed-upon standard for the country. I mean that some drivers approach on-coming traffic on a regular basis. It's not a seldom seen event. Indeed it's common, especially with the ubiquitous motorcycles. Similarly, driving the wrong way on a one-way street, or driving on city sidewalks is not uncommon.
2. A yellow traffic light = maintain speed. Also expect that some vehicles will go through the first one or two seconds of a red light. Likewise, vehicles waiting at a red light will anticipate a green traffic light and start moving when they see the yellow light for the cross traffic. So, a green light = probably safe to go, but look both ways and, if approaching a green light where the cross traffic is not visible, it's advised to slow down and be cautious.
3. The bigger the vehicle, the more 'right-of-way' it warrants. In other words, buses and trucks take precedence over cars, cars over motorbikes, ...and pity the poor bicycler.
4. Pedestrians crossing the street must use their wits. Vehicles do not stop to allow people to cross, and a white 'zebra line' is disregarded.
5. Curves in the road cancel out the middle line. Put another way; vehicles on a curve will stray over the middle of the road, sometimes fully in the opposing traffic's lane. If it's a four lane road, it's not uncommon for an approaching driver to stray over both opposing lanes. Sometimes it seems as though the arc is an alien concept in Asia. Similarly, right angled turns are not arched. A Thai person making a turn in a vehicle will take the shortest distance between two points. This often results in cutting off other vehicles and it's not uncommon for a turning vehicle to come in on the wrong side of another vehicle that's waiting at a cross-street intersection.
6. Speed. Only in Bangkok is there even a whimper of enforcing speeding laws. Everywhere else in Thailand it's 'go as fast as you dare'.
7. Clearances between drivers' vehicles are a fraction of what would be tolerated in Europe or North America. Anything less than touching is acceptable, even at speed.
8. Driving while drunk. Though there's a rumor that it's against the law, there is no enforcement.
9. Too many riders for safety. Pick up trucks packed with as many people as will fit are not a rare sight in Southeast Asia. Three, four, even five people squeezed on a motorcycle seat is not uncommon. Restraining seats for little children are virtually unknown. If seatbelt buckles were lovers, they'd be a lonely bunch. Ask your Thai car passenger to buckle-up and you'll get a smile and a 'mai pen rai' (it doesn't matter).
10. Smog and noise. There are no effective anti-smog laws in Thailand. Basically, if it moves, it can go on the street. Engines are not tuned well (or sometimes especially rigged to be loud/macho), so noisy smoggy vehicles are the result. As for roving advertisers; slow-moving pick-up trucks with horn-blower loudspeakers are common in all towns and cities. These very loud sounds (adverts, announcements) are broadcast through neighborhoods at anytime of the day. Sunday mornings at sunrise is a popular time for roving detergent ads.
11. There is some enforcement of parking laws. However, people in expensive cars can avoid a ticket by with simply turning on their emergency blinker lights.
12 Passing another vehicle involves little consideration of on-coming traffic. Passing at blind curves or hills is not uncommon, especially if the driver's vehicle is bigger than the ones that may be encountered (see #3). Remember how, at High School driver's ed. class, they taught about maintaining a car length between you and the car ahead, for every ten miles per hour of speed? Drivers in Southeast Asia would laugh away such instruction. If you're in traffic, and you leave any safe buffer space between you and the car ahead, it's likely another driver will zip in front of you.
13. There is no protocol for making cross-lane turns at intersections. A turn against traffic is often a mini game of 'chicken'.
14. When a driver gets to a busy cross street without a traffic light, he will rarely come to a complete stop. Even if he does, the front of his vehicle will protrude one or two meters into the cross street. While there, he forces all traffic in that lane to blob around his protruding vehicle, as no self-respecting Thai driver will slow (out of courtesy) to allow a car to enter from a side street. They'll only slow out of necessity - to avoid a collision. The driver from the side street will slowly ease into traffic, until the cross traffic is compelled to slow to a crawl to let him proceed.
15. Bangkok is renown for having world class gridlock. One morning, I stood on a sidewalk and, in the course of 30 minutes counted 76 taxis passing by. Only two had passengers. In contrast, Copenhagen instituted a program to encourage commuters to ride bicycles that seems to have worked well enough that now (2003) a third of in-city travel is on non-noisy, non-smoke belching, muscle-powered two wheelers. There are several reasons why a program like that would be very difficult to implement in Bangkok. Not the least is people consider the bicycle an unsophisticated mode of travel.
16. Some more ranting about 'right-of-way'; When two cars approach a space that's too narrow for both to enter at the same time, one of the two following scenarios will develop: (a) One or the other driver will stop out of necessity. If that happens, the driver who's able to pass will not smile or wave a friendly acknowledgment. Rather, he/she will drive rigidly through. When a farang driver and Thai driver approach a narrow lane, it will likely be the farang who will pull over to allow the other driver to pass. (b) The other scenario is both car drivers will attempt to squeeze their vehicles through a space that's obviously too narrow. They will get stuck and other arriving vehicles will press up against their bottleneck. While stone-faced, all players will slowly extradite themselves so as to move on to their important engagements.
19. Thailand does not have four-way stop provisions for road intersections. Go figure: They don't stop for regular stop signs, why expect them to exert the added courtesy of an automatic stop to yield to another driver?
20. Did I mention tail-gating or signaling for turns? After reading this far,
I'll let the reader figure what to expect on those issues.
