Where Not to Park Your Bus
Going to work this morning, I noticed that the traffic was worse than usual (and that’s saying something for Bangkok). It wasn’t until about 20 minutes later that we, we being me and my taxi driver, finally got to the point where the problem was – a bus was parked right in the middle of the road.
At least I’ve got a good excuse for being late to work “Sorry I’m late, the traffic was terrible because someone parked a bus in the middle of the road”. Using traffic as an excuse normally doesn’t work here because it’s always bad.
I just returned from Thailand about 2 weeks ago and I was amazed at how the traffic was. Although at times it was crazy and chaotic it all seemed to work. I only saw two accidents during my entire 3 week stay, and one of them was due to a tire blowout.
FryGuy @ Orlando Metblogs.
That is so true. Amongst all that chaos, there’s actually a sense of order, believe it or not!
Well….Thailand actually has one of the highest rates of traffic-fatality risk in the world, with over 60 accidental deaths per 100,000 population in 1998. That’s more deaths from accidents than from cancer or infections. It’s not hard to see why – driving drunk or on drugs, speeding insanely, motorcycles zipping around everywhere, crappy roads, and next to no regard for any traffic laws. The situation is worse in the provinces than in Bangkok, where I think the snail’s pace of traffic keeps the accindent rate lower than it would be otherwise. Yeah, it “works”, in that most people get home alive; but I’d hope the bar was set a little higher than that!