Phuket’s Seven Days of Danger claims six lives

PHUKET: The final toll for the “Seven Days of Danger” road safety campaign in Phuket is six dead and 80 injured in 75 reported accidents, all higher than last year’s figures.

The final day of the campaign yesterday saw 10 people injured in nine reported accidents, none involving foreigners.

During the 2010-2011 New Year campaign four people died and 74 were injured in 67 accidents in Phuket.

The Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Phuket Office, which oversees the campaign, set as its “goal” a 5% reduction in all three categories going into the period.

Speeding was given as the most common cause of accidents at 22.3%, followed by drunk driving (19.1%), poor visibility (11.7%), dangerous overtaking (9.6%) and obstacles in the road (6.4%).

The vast majority of accidents, 88.3%, involved motorbikes.

A total of 8,480 people were checked for drunk driving, resulting in 18 people being charged.

No new drunk driving charges were filed yesterday, even though drunk driving was given as the cause of an accident in Thalang last night.

A total of 48,508 cars were pulled over for inspection at more than 50 police checkpoints set up around the island over the period.

Police charged 4,031 motorists with various infractions. The most common was driving without a license (2,070), followed by failure to wear a safety helmet (1,590) and failure to wear a safety belt (265).

The Seven Days of Danger campaign is an biannual accounting conducted during the Songkran Festival and New Year holidays.

The nationwide toll stands at 335 people dead and 3,375 more people seriously injured in 3,093 road accidents over the period, according the National Road Safety Center in Bangkok.

There were 23 fewer deaths, 375 fewer injuries and 404 fewer accidents recorded, year-on-year.

Ten provinces, including three in the South (Satun, Yala and Pattani) made it through the period free of road accident fatalities.

Buri Ram and Nakhon Sawan had the highest death tolls, with 18 fatalities each.