Phuket gets ready for New Year road safety campaign ‘Seven Days of Danger’

Phuket is getting ready for the annual road safety campaign known as ‘Seven Days of Danger.’ The campaign will be held around the New Year from December 29 to January 4.

Phuket Vice Governor Anupap Rodkwan chaired a meeting about the campaign at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday.

Officials will use various strategies to improve road safety during the campaign. These include prosecuting traffic law violators with maximum penalties, in order to pressure drivers to obey laws.

Other strategies will include:

• Marking lines on roads for drivers to slow down while approaching crosswalks
• Making traffic markings clear
• Making warning signs and symbols clearly visible to drivers and pedestrians to reduce speed in “tight situations” where there is busy traffic or obstructions.

Although the official ‘Seven Dangerous Days’ are December 29 to January 4, the public relations campaign will last from December 1-21. There will also be a ‘pre-intensive control period’ from December 22-28.

An event to mark World Day of Remembrance for Road Accident Victims 2022 will be held on December 26.

After the ‘Seven Days’ period, the campaign will conclude with ‘intensive control’ from January 5-11.

Thailand’s roads are notoriously deadly. Thailand was ranked the second most dangerous country to drive in according to a driver’s educational platform. There were 21,052 accidents in 2020, and 11,138 accidents in 2021. About 20% of accidents involved motorcycles, while 8% involved six-wheel trucks, and 8% involved trucks with at least 10 wheels.

PM Prayut Chan-o-cha this year announced a major goal of cutting the number of road deaths by almost two-thirds by 2027.

Part of the effort by Thai officials includes holding road safety campaigns. The country also holds campaigns for ‘Seven Dangerous Days of Songkran.’ The Thai new year holiday period is both the busiest and the most dangerous each year as Thais head home for family festivities. On the first day of the Songkran campaign this year, the court issued 459 fines, 328 of which were for drink driving cases.

Can the ‘Seven Days’ campaigns help change the situation of Thailand’s deadly driving?