Asian Road Safety - Decades of doing the wrong things ever better.

Cause and effect. The easy fix when 80% of fatalities on the roads are motorcyclists is to jump to conclusions based on finding blame.?Not like there is a shortage of data. 20 to 80 fatalities a day with 80% of them motorcyclists die on Thailand's roads. For comparison at the opposite end, the UK having a similar population size but the average is around 3 people die on the roads each day. Around 20% of total road fatalities being motorcyclists.

Only this is misleading. Firstly due to physics - motorcycle riders have the soft bits on the outside. Of course a rider will come off worse in an accident. Making car's safer also reduces visibility of the driver and leads to risk compensation.?

Another big issue with Motorcycle Safety in Thailand and across Asia is the percentage of motorcycles by population. Thailand has the same population size as the UK but 15 times the number of registered motorcycles. I estimate the "Big Bike" numbers are similar, but there are thousands of scooters as well used across Asia.

Yet there are even greater factors that lead to the majority of accidents being motorcycle riders, the motorcycles tend to be mostly used like bicycles are across Europe, school children commuting, transfer of goods (eg Eggs, propane Gas Bottles, even seen them used to escort Elephants) the humble scooter being the default vehicle used by all to get cheaply from A to B.?Who can blame them, especially in an ever warming world. Cheap economical transport that can be adopted to a variety of uses.

Thailand however has a further issue compared to many neighbours, there have been decades of incentives offered to encourage car use, so the roads are full of mixed vehicle types as well as high numbers of motorcycles.?

This is not an issue in itself, but it becomes a major issue when all those different vehicle types have operators who have only been taught rote learned rules and machine handling skills in off road training facilities.?

When we look to other countries with lower fatalities then the focus is far more aimed at better education, specifically the real world interactive education on pubic roads.?

So, the way to improve safety substantially in Thailand would be to focus on better education in line with countries with safer roads.?

But there is even an issue there. The country that dominates road safety training in Thailand is Japan. This is through the dominance of the Honda training schools in the training offered.

I have much respect for Japan, it has a highly compliant road system. 100 hours of theory training to pass the theory test alone. Lots of restrictions on vehicles. Lots of hyper compliance. Nothing at all like Great Britain, very different I think to Thai culture too. It should be noted that despite all of Japan's compliance focus, it still does not have as few accidents as many countries in Europe including the UK. Yet the training approach in the UK is very different.?

We share the same spaces together because we train to share the same spaces together. Around 95% of all road user education in the UK is done via qualified "Master" experienced Instructors taking "Novice" students out onto public roads either on a 1 to 1 or maximum 2 Students to 1 Instructor ratio on Motorcycles. 1 to 1 training for cars. Trucks and Buses have separate vehicle specific Instructors.?

There are thousands of Instructors offering vehicle specific training from Novice to Advanced levels every day on British roads. Yet there is no rider training done on Thailand's roads. Non.

They are not alone here, India and many others in the region have tests that do not require a display of real world interactive skills that we expect even the most basic student to display some basic level of skill in dealing with. Nothing like we have spent 40 years developing and now look to improve on with the latest human factors research like better understanding the science of being seen, or systemic based approaches to safety like "No Surprise / No Accident". While we discuss advanced information gathering to approach bends with the bike best set up to corner safely and prepared for the unexpected. Thai riders are told to "keep left" and ride in the most dangerous part of the road, road users dying daily due to blind hyper compliance.?

Yet the answer is further hyper compliance, further focus on improving machine handling through off road training that will help riders go faster - therefore faster into trouble.?

It was recorded in the Hurt report study in the 90's

that Thai riders had slightly better response times than riders from Los Angeles, but both fared badly in their abilities to detect changing circumstances ahead.?Still to today the same issues still lead to accidents and fatalities in double figures every day, many who simply did not predict the actions of others or respond to changing events.?

The most common motorcycle accident on the planet is the right-of-way error at a junction. The simple issue of a turning vehicle not seeing an approaching rider. So common it also has an acronym the SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You). This does not change anywhere Australia, USA, UK, Europe, India, Thailand, Japan, still exactly the same accidents happening for the same reasons.?

Some countries with better training have fewer accidents because the training helps drivers better predict the actions of others, along with better road markings and other factors create variance in the statistics, but still the same accidents, one major reason for these is explored in "the Science of Being Seen." We can explore the science deeper in many directions yet one significant factor is where a driver will look to see danger. Experienced drivers scan less than novices, experience telling them where they are most likely to see the major danger. Typically the human eye is attracted to large single colour objects like trucks, buses or cars. Once the eye has locked on to the major danger, the brain often focuses on that information. A small motorcycle can easily be lost in that view.?

We now suggest approaches to help riders stand out from the crowd. To help drivers see us we can cross their field of view, work with each other to avoid confrontations. This is not about blame, we can keep telling car drivers to look more, just 3 decades of that suggests it does not stop the SMIDSY's. This is about moving on from blame to improving our safety.?

Problem is in Thailand that nothing like this is discussed, instead riders are punished if they do not ride in the most dangerous part of the road.?

We are now in the realm where Riders Rights groups are fighting the government for the right to not put themselves in danger due to the Police using a poor interpretation of a road traffic rule to endanger the riders through making them ride in the most dangerous part of the road.

Excuse me if I struggle with this when I find an article in Thai that essentially suggests the answers still can be found via segregating the traffic further, more hyper compliance. Thailand is at the end of a "Decade of Action" that has turned out to be "Dead on Arrival". It is frustrating that another decade begins with no lessons learned from the last one.

https://www.thairath.co.th/news/local/1741810

#HyperCompliance. #ZeroVision #50NotBy20SoNow30