A motorcycle rider escaped death but suffered severe injuries after nosediving six metres into a hole while “speeding” down a road in Bangkok’s Thonburi district in the wee hours of Thursday.
Police were alerted to the accident near Soi Ratchada-Thaphra 7/1 in Dao Khanong subdistrict at around 2am.
At the scene they found the rider and a crashed Yamaha Fino motorcycle lying at the bottom of a 6-metre-deep opening in the road surface, where Metropolitan Waterworks Authority officials had been laying an underground pipe.
Rescue workers used a stretcher and pulley to lift the victim out of the hole. Medics found the man, aged between 35 and 40, had suffered several severe injuries, including a bleeding head.
He was rushed to Somdech Phra Pinklao Hospital.
The head construction worker at the accident site reportedly told police that two left lanes of the four-lane road had been closed for pipe laying, with warning signs installed.
However, he said, the motorcycle rider was travelling against the flow of traffic at high speed and plunged into the hole. For the latest stories follow Bangkok Jack News on Twitter.
Police aim to question the man to find out the exact cause of the accident once his condition improves.
Eerily, a similar incident happened in Bangkok also in September last year, when a motorcycle rider fell into another 6-metre-deep hole, where workers were laying underground cables near Soi Ratchadapisek 10 in Huai Khwang district.
The victim suffered a broken leg and several injuries. He, too, had to be brought up to the surface on a stretcher and via a pulley
