Hier ein Erklärungsversuch:Balu hat geschrieben:Wie sind denn diese Zahlen zu verstehen?
Bangkok Post
EDITORIAL
Published: 14/04/2015 at 06:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
Short-term road fix fails
Another long holiday period, another short-term campaign to show official concern about deaths on the roads.
Police generals have ordered that Songkran highway deaths this year be lower than the 322 of last year. A seven-day campaign is under way to enforce the orders. There are ways to bring down Thailand's highway death toll. But neither one-week campaigns nor statistics-fiddling are the solution.
If anything, the government's own statistics prove this. Last year's death toll during the "seven dangerous days" of Songkran compared with a virtually identical 321 in 2013. Before that, the Road Safety Centre produced figures for only five days. In 2012, it said that 253 died on the holiday roads, while accidents in 2011 killed 253.
Those figures are supposed to shock the nation, particularly drivers. They are hauled out annually to headline the pre-holiday announcements of "crackdowns" against drink-driving, speeding and the like.
Police last week stressed there must be no drinking in vehicles, even by passengers on buses. All this is meant to emphasise how this year, unlike all previous years, there will be tough enforcement against dangerous drivers, so that accidents will be prevented and lives spared.
It's mostly for show. The holiday road death figures certainly are shocking. But real figures are far more shocking, just seldom presented.
Last year, as stated, the Songkran road death toll was 322 — an appalling one-week figure. But during all of last year, according to the World Health Organisation, Thailand road deaths totalled 26,312. That works out to 506 deaths per week. So the real shock is that the Songkran toll last year was one of the least deadly weeks on the nation's roads.
Agencies have slightly varying figures, but every organisation tracking road deaths agrees Thailand is one of the world's five worst countries for fatalities on the road. The WHO places Thailand fourth, with 38.1 road fatalities per 100,000 citizens. Eritrea, the Dominican Republic and Libya are worse. Thailand, the 20th largest country in the world by population, ranks ninth in total road deaths.
There are several steps that authorities, including police, should have taken years ago.
One is obvious to all. There is terrible enforcement of quite comprehensive traffic and safety laws. There are two others, however, which governments including the current regime have simply bypassed.
The first is that most road deaths occur to motorcyclists. The other is an obtuse refusal to regard road safety as a continuing issue.
The motorcycle is the world's most common death vehicle. Worldwide, according to the WHO statistics cited above, motorcyclists make up 23% of road deaths. (Pedestrians are a close second, at 22%.)
But in Thailand, 74% of all deaths on the roads are either the drivers or passengers of a motorcycle. Clearly, there should be massive and focused attention on educating motorcyclists and enforcing special motorcycle laws. Even more clearly, there is no such programme.
The WHO graciously grants Thailand a 6-out-of-10 score for enforcing the motorcycle helmet law. At the same time, it estimates that about half of motorcycle drivers and 19% of pillion riders wear even a flimsy helmet.
While police are searching buses for whisky bottles today, thousands of motorcyclists are heading from one party to another, for more drinking.
If they make it, they will be among the fortunate.
The Road Safety Directing Centre will fold its publicity drive until the next big holiday. Any serious effort to bring down the road toll must last all year, every year.
