Thailand suffered lisses estimated at Bt500 billion in 2019 from road accidents and over 80 per cent involved motorcycles, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report.
Thailand is the country with the highest death rate from road accidents in Asean — 32.7 per cent.
Meanwhile, by estimating the statistics of road fatalities over the next six years (from 2021 to 2027), the worst- case scenario is estimated at 18,606 deaths per year and about 15,399 deaths per year in a best-case scenario.
Nopadol Santipakorn, managing director, Road Accident Victims Protection Co, said that WHO had estimated the financial loss from road fatalities in different countries.
In the case of Thailand, the losses due to accidents were estimated at 3 per cent of gross domestic product, or Bt500 billion on 2019 GDP of Bt16.87 trillion.
Deaths and road accidents during the first three months of this year (January-March) are likely to increase after a sharp decline in numbers in 2020 to 17,831 from 22,000 in 2019, partly due to the April 2020 nationwide lockdown due to the Covid-19 crisis.
However, without the Covid-19 factor, the number of deaths may return to 19,000-20,000 people, especially in January 2021. Overall, one person is killed every 23 seconds, and about 317,000 people per year worldwide die in road accidents.
Approximately 39 per cent of the deaths are family heads.
This means that the death of one person puts 2.43 people per family in trouble. It is also a loss for Thailand’s demography as the country enters an ageing society, Nopadol said
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