Day Two – Disgraceful road statistics from the first two days of Songkran

In just the first two days of the Songkran “seven days of danger” from April 11-17, a total of 99 people have already been killed in traffic accidents, with another 1,085 injured.

The road accident count for the beginning days of the notorious Songkran accident period have increased compared to the same period last year, while nearly 60,000 drunk drivers have been arrested by the end of the second day of strict road safety monitoring.

The Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department’s Road Safety Centre on Friday reported a total 1,026 road accidents occurred during the first two days of the reporting period, leaving 1,085 people injured and 99 killed. The number of accidents, injuries, and deaths on the road has increased this year, since on the second day of the 2017 Songkran holiday’s seven dangerous days there had been 994 accidents, 1,035 injured people, and 95 deaths.

The National Council for Peace and Order deputy spokesperson Colonel Sirichan Ngathong says that road travel was still far from safe, with officers finding 56,051 people driving dangerously or drunk while driving on day two of the operation to suppress drunk driving.

Sirichan said that 32,592 of those cases involved motorcyclists. Officers have seized 835 motorcycles and confiscated 356 motorcycle driving licences.

The remaining 23,459 cases involved private cars or public vehicles, leading to 494 seized cars and 1,741 confiscated driver’s licences.

At the conclusion of the overall operation for the first two days, there were 59,390 cases of reckless driving, with 38,546 sent to court and 1,475 vehicles seized.