Shirts, however, are not to blame for road deaths. These, he said at today’s daily review of the Seven Days of Danger, were all too often due to alcohol abuse. He blamed two of the four official road deaths so far in the Seven Days on alcohol.
He said that blood samples showed that two of the people who died had blood-alcohol levels of roughly six times the legal limit.
Sylvain Wacquez, the Frenchman who crashed his motorbike into a U-turning car on Sunday (December 29) was found posthumously to have had a blood-alcohol level 357 mg/dL, and the reading for Robert Marano, who died in another motorbike smash on the same day, was even higher at 378 mg/dL. The legal limit is 60.
A doctor contacted by The Phuket News commented, “Was he a very big man? That level of alcohol would kill most people.”
Pol Col Jirasak Siemsak, Superintendent of Administrative Branch of Phuket Provincial Police, asked Governor Maitree Intusut to provide funding to buy more breathalysers because most of the ones the police have are broken. The Governor said he could get funding from auctioning vanity license plates and from the Board of Department of Land Transport.
On the fourth of the Seven Days, there were four serious road accidents with six people hospitalised but no deaths.
However, it is known that Thanawat Todthing, 19, who crashed last night at 11.30 pm, died after midnight from his injuries and will therefore appear in today’s road toll numbers, to be released tomorrow.
So far the four-day total is 20 accidents, 26 causalities, and four deaths, compared with 27, 24 and nine respectively last year. According to the statistics, the highest number of road accidents was immediately caused by motorbikes cutting in front of other vehicles, while the highest number of arrests was for not having driving licences.
MCOT reports that the figures for the first four days for the entire country were 209 dead and 1,931 injured badly enough to require hospitalisation. The highest number of fatalities was in Thailand’s largest province, Nakhon Ratchassima, where 13 people have died so far.
The number of people found in possession of drugs in Phuket was frightening.
The meeting heard that at the Kathu checkpoint six out of 30 bus drivers searched were found to be in possession of amphetamine and one with alcohol. One truck driver who was stopped was also found to be in possession of drugs. All of these were heading for Patong Hill.
Gov Maitree said, “We are going to call bus owners to discuss this matter seriously because they are directly affected by accidents.
“Enforcement, building public understanding and education are the main ways to solve the problems. We need to add taxi education as well.”