This year’s holiday period set to claim more lives on the road than last year
Each year, Thailand monitors the week over New Year for road deaths since it’s the busiest time on the streets of the country with the world’s highest rate of road fatalities.
This year, 3,456 vehicle accidents were recorded over the first six days of the monitoring period, which officially ends tonight though most people have already returned from their holiday travels, reported The Nation.
In those accidents, 375 people died while another 3,612 were injured. This was announced today at a press conference by members of the New Year Road Accident Prevention and Reduction Operation Center at the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department.
Last year, 380 people died by the time the period had ended, that number may be surpassed when the numbers are totaled tomorrow.
The conference was run by Maj. Gen. Somsak Somrak of the National Council for Peace and Order. He revealed that, yesterday alone, 400 accidents happened resulting in the loss of 51 lives and leaving 431 people injured.
As is often the case, he shared that nearly 80 percent of the accidents involved motorcycles while drunk driving was a factor in 40 percent of accidents, and speeding contributed to 28.5 percent of road incidents.
Somsak congratulated the eight provinces that have, so far, reported no deaths from accidents over the monitoring period: Narathiwat, Nan, Yala, Ranong, Nong Bua Lamphu, Nakhon Nayok, Trang, and Chainat.
Source: Coconuts
