12 killed in bus crash

[gotlost]

12 killed by car crash in Buriram



12 killed by car crash in Buriram
 •Published: 31/12/2011 at 11:54 AM
 •Online news:







A total of 12 people were killed and 4 others seriously injured when a passenger bus from Bangkok heading to Si Sa Ket crashed head on head with a pickup truck in Buriram’s Nangrong district on Saturday morning, police said.
 
The fatal road accident took place on Nangrong-Lam Plaimas road in front of a guardhouse in tambon Ban Sing of Nangrong district about 08.15am.
 
12 passengers on the pickup truck instantly died at the spot, 4 others passengers, one on the pickup truck and three on the bus, were seriously wounded and admitted to nearby hospital.

[Jetmickey]

Apparently  the 12 in the Pick-up were on their way to a funeral.Very sad  but par for the course in Thailand ..RIP 

Thai crash kills 12 travelling to funeral

Twelve mourners have been killed when their packed pickup truck collided with a passenger bus as they travelled to the funeral of a relative in northeastern Thailand, police say.

Ten women and two men, many of whom were sitting in the open-top rear of the truck, were killed instantly in the smash in Buriram province.

Four other people were injured.

Colonel Pongsak Suk-im, commander of the local Nangrong district police, said that the early morning collision happened when the truck pulled onto a main road in front of a long-distance bus from Bangkok.

The accident came during the most dangerous week of the year on Thailand's roads.

Annual fatalities from vehicle crashes during the New Year period regularly run into the hundreds, due to a combination of the large number of people on the roads and drunk driving.

Almost 100 people have already died and more than a thousand have been injured in accidents in the past two days, according to the interior ministry.

[ted]

Quite sad and tragic.
This twisted irony could only occur here.

RIP

[Jon Terry]

So sad, this has taken me back 5 years or so ago, about this time of year when me and my wife were just about to leave a bar about a mile out of Tapek (towards the Taco junction) and were held up for about a minute as the bar couldn't change a 100bht note when we heard a huge crash just outside the bar, a pick up and a car car had a head on at high speed and flew down into the paddy fields, we ran to help and the passengers (husband and wife) were tangled up in the wreckage. It took some doing but with the help of other people and alot of useless people just watching what was going on we managed to get them out, but is was not looking good, within minutes of getting them into a pick up to take them to hospital an elderly couple pulled up going crazy as it was there son and daughter in-law and they were all travelling home after the funeral of there other son who died in a car crash, this revelation was more of a shock to me than seeing the carnage of the scene, my wife tried to make them let me drive them to the hospital but they would not have it.
we had to leave for the UK shortly after and never found out if the couple survived or not. But we do know that the driver of the pick up was drunk and overtaking when he hit the couples car.
This kind of thing is all to common in Thailand and I am sure as long as the penalties remain low or arrangements of compensation to the families continues then nothing will change just get worse as more and more Thai's now own four wheels.

[Prakhonchai Nick]

No matter  how good we believe we are at driving, we are always at the mercy of other road users every time we travel. I try to avoid road travel at crazy holiday times such as Songkran and New year.

[ted]

No matter  how good we believe we are at driving, we are always at the mercy of other road users every time we travel. I try to avoid road travel at crazy holiday times such as Songkran and New year.

As you know Nick, these tragedies occur commonly any time of any given year. And they do.
This [sort of] excuse that it has anything to do with a holiday period.
Their driving practices remain the same consistently.

[gotlost]

Thailand does not hold a monopoly on tragedies.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/31/us/texas-crash/index.html?hpt=us_c2

[nookiebear]

The bus would have been 'hopping along' as its a perfectly straight road at the junction where it occured...It was quite a sobering sight to see a lorry full of coffins turning up at Nang Rong hospital....Just lucky that more wern't killed...Happy New Year

[Mod]

12 killed, 15 hurt in Buri Ram road accident

The Nation on Sunday January 1, 2012


A crowded Bangkok-Si Sa Ket tour bus collided with a pick-up truck in Buri Ram's Nang Rong district yesterday morning, killing 12 people and injuring 15. The Road Safety Centre, meanwhile, yesterday reported the casualty toll for the first two days of the seven-day New Year's holiday danger period at 94 deaths and 1,051 injuries in 955 accidents.
Nang Rong police and rescue workers called to the Ban Sing Intersection on Nang Rong-Chamni Road discovered the bus and the wrecked, overturned pick-up truck in a roadside ditch. Inside the truck police found 12 dead bodies and one seriously injured person. A police investigation found that the truck was carrying relatives to assist a funeral in Buri Ram's Nong Hong district, and that the bus carried 50 passengers. Bus driver Somkiat Chutrakul, 34, and 13 bus passengers were injured. Police were investigating the cause of accident.

Land Transport Department chief Somchai Siriwattanachok told members of the media yesterday at the Road Safety Centre that four provinces - Kamphaeng Phet, Chaiyaphum, Trat and Nong Khai - had been free of road accidents as of yesterday.

On December 30, 58 people were killed (up by three from 2010) and 578 injured (down by 92) in 547 accidents (down by 72) nation-wide, he said.

Most accidents involved motorcycles (82.41 per cent). Among the main causes were drunk driving at 34.19 per cent and speeding (21.02 per cent). A total of 705,312 vehicles were stopped at 2,459 checkpoints and 89,715 motorists were found to have broken the traffic law, mostly by not wearing helmets and not carrying driver's licences. The 955 cumulative road accidents were fewer than the same period last year by 57 cases, the injuries down by 44 cases but deaths were up by 15 cases, he said.

Trang had the most cumulative accidents at 37, followed by Nakhon Sawan (36), while Nakhon Pathom and Ayutthaya shared the highest number of deaths at six cases each. Trang and Nakhon Sawan also had the highest cumulative number of injuries at 41 and 37 cases, respectively.

Holiday travellers yesterday continued to head to the provinces. The Northeast gateway province of Nakhon Ratchasima's Mitraparp Highway saw heavy congestion, with 20,000 policemen dispatched to man checkpoints. Bangkok's Mor Chit Bus Terminal was also crowded; Transport Co Ltd said up to 170,000 travellers passed through the terminal to take 7,317 bus trips.

[daleking]

Still the rate of road accidents caused by drink n drive is increasing, even we are having some strict laws against it but still we are unable to stop it completely. People need to understand the value of life, by driving after drinking they are not only playing with their life but the life of other people traveling on the road is endangered. Some strict actions have to be taken to stop these accidents.
    

[Jon Terry]

Trouble is Daleking,
When the counties mind set is what ever happens was meant ( Buddhist)  to be all responsibility is taken from their conscience until it's too late.
And I'm not slating Buddhism I really love it ,but this is a mentality I have witnessed many times by my Thai family and community.
It is only in the cold light of day when it's too late that guilt or an understanding of the danger comes into focus. 

[Nobby]

Trouble is Daleking,
When the counties mind set is what ever happens was meant ( Buddhist)  to be all responsibility is taken from their conscience until it's too late.
And I'm not slating Buddhism I really love it ,but this is a mentality I have witnessed many times by my Thai family and community.
It is only in the cold light of day when it's too late that guilt or an understanding of the danger comes into focus.

 I concur with that, as you can see by the number of motorcy riders who drive out onto a major road without even looking if there is any traffic coming. With 99%
 of vehicles blessed by Buddha, I cannot understand why so many accidents/fatalities?

[Vombatus]

Trouble is Daleking,
When the counties mind set is what ever happens was meant ( Buddhist)  to be all responsibility is taken from their conscience until it's too late.
And I'm not slating Buddhism I really love it ,but this is a mentality I have witnessed many times by my Thai family and community.
It is only in the cold light of day when it's too late that guilt or an understanding of the danger comes into focus.

 I concur with that, as you can see by the number of motorcy riders who drive out onto a major road without even looking if there is any traffic coming. With 99%
 of vehicles blessed by Buddha, I cannot understand why so many accidents/fatalities?

As you know Nobby, the Thais would probably point to the fact that there would be a lot more accidents if it were not for the Buddha blessed cars that do not crash.

[Jon Terry]

Even Jue my misses hates the Thai roads now she has spent 7 years in the UK, But when you can get a driving license in one day with a back hander no wonder the roads are so bad, it took the best part of 100 years for the brits to understand the dangers with lots of training and awareness and that was through a long period of slow motors,not like the powerful cars/trucks in Thailand, I feel in Thailand the it is the equivalent of giving 16 years olds in the UK 1000cc motorbikes, just disaster waiting to happen.

[Welsh Wonder]

Looks like this is turning into another 'lets bash the Thai Drivers' thread