Phuket vehicle crash kills Russians and Thai

A motorbike and car crash in Phuket killed a Russian man, Russian woman, and a Thai woman in the early hours of this morning.

The three lives were tragically taken after a big bike, a motorbike, and a taxi car all collided in the town of Rawai. Rescuers arrived to find the damaged vehicles scattered over the road.

Nearby, they found the body of the 35 year old Russian man, the big bike rider. A 29 year old Russian woman, his passenger, was found near him, and she was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The man and woman’s names were withheld pending embassy and family notification.

The rescuers found three passengers who had been on a smaller motorbike. A foreign man and woman on the bike had been injured in the crash, and a Thai woman, 26 year old Tanyaluck Loonthong, was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

The driver of the taxi car was left uninjured, The Phuket Express reported. Police said they would check CCTV footage to find the cause of the accident for potential legal action. The sequence of events was not immediately clear.

This crash comes after a Singaporean man was killed in Phuket’s town of Kamala just yesterday. The passenger on the motorbike, 29 year old Natalie Snghui Yi, and another Singaporean national, suffered internal bleeding as a result of the accident.

Early this morning, a Danish man in Chiang Mai crashed his car into a moat, and the Thai female passenger drowned.

In yet another crash this week, a well-known Australian surfboard designer died after crashing his motorcycle in Chon Buri on November 1.

Last week, a soon-to-be bride was tragically killed in a car crash in Thailand’s central province of Suphan Buri.

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.

Hopefully, somehow some way, Thailand will find a way to achieve this massive goal and lower the number of lives so tragically cut short.