Thread: Huay Yai - 13 year old motorbike driver killed following collision with truck.

Originally Posted by Chairman Mao

No it ain't. I spent over a year living in Isaan and some of the shit you see up there with regards to kids speeding around on bikes with no helmets, no anything - one time this kid past me on one of those 150cc sonic scooter/motorbike hybrids and his hands and legs were at full stretch to reach the pedals and handle bars- couldn't even sit on the seat, was spread over the gas tank, no helmet, zooming along a potholed old country road - now the potholes in Isaan, that's another fucking story.

I live in Isaan. I over took a guy riding his motorcyle sitting crossed legged, the same as if he was sitting on the floor. What chance had he got in responding to an emergency ?

Originally Posted by Sakeopete

Law enforcement is a joke here, in Aranyaprathet the cops control traffic at the private school so the 2-5 under aged kids without helmets/motorcycle can get in and out of the school property safely. Really the parents are to blame for putting their kids at risk because they are too lazy to pick them up from school.

This is a twice daily run, to and from school at my village. How many kids can you count? Don't bother, it was 97 when the last got on, not including the driver and his wife in the front cabin.

Now, the direction the bus is heading is known as the 'superhighway'...and this extract is from my Life in the Village thread (02)...

"Just beyond the village school, and the road falls away into what has been dubbed the superhighway. The local government started it years ago, aiming to connect with another road leading to Pang Khorn, ran out of money and never got around to finishing it, so in true Thai fashion it was left for extremes in weather to break down and hopefully wash away the evidence. Now some 7km of the 9km stretch render it, let’s be generous, difficult to negotiate. Still, this is what they have, and glory to the villagers for knuckling down and getting on with it, rather than risk piquing their guardians with protests that would leave them dead ended anyway.

Dangerous as it is the superhighway serves a need, and the villagers have this frightening ability to accept the adverse consequences of their guardians’ theft and ineptitude without a whimper, so they’re grateful enough that the obstacle course was at least started, which allows cautious travel to Pang Khorn without having to take the longer route via Sakon, philosophically surmising that this means one day that stretch will be finished, even if by then the rest of the road has fallen into disrepair."

There are a couple of remote homes along the superhighway, but nothing of substance till the next village which is at the other end of the superhighway...this is where the two on the bicycle are heading, but all they can think of is the 40 baht they save daily (2 x 10 baht x 2) by cycling some 20km, 14 of those through a manmade obstacle course.

My enquiries tell me the school bus did go off the road once when the superhighway was mired up after rains, but nobody was injured so it was business as usual from the next day.

Who is responsible? Parents? How about the school, or does anyone suppose they don't know because they do and only too well? Or is it that village people are ignorant, don't care, or simply uneducated and unaware of the dangers? Or worse, that they do know, are aware, do care, but this is the hand they've been dealt and therefore get on with it!

I live on a school route so have to put up with students turning onto the road front in front of me every morning ,racing each other down the road.
Funniest time though was when a copper pulled out ,I blew my horn and he dropped his new flashy bike onto the road right in front of me,He just smiled at me and nodded ,picked up his bike and rode off.

Originally Posted by Ivor Biggun

I live in Isaan. I over took a guy riding his motorcyle sitting crossed legged, the same as if he was sitting on the floor. What chance had he got in responding to an emergency ?

Depends.

How big was his amulet?

A regular sight in the evening on the Chalong - Rawai road here in Phuket is brainless kids racing each other - no lights - and laying flat on the saddles of their bikes like bloody superman !!

(the same stretch of road where the brit, who was the subject of a recent thread,was killed when his car left the road )

Originally Posted by keda

This is a twice daily run

If you look at Tsicar's avatar the picture is the same nearly. I sent him the photo from where we live just to make him feel homesick. It still amazes me to this day how stupid the Thais are.