Summary of a case study published in 2019
According to the 2018 WHO Global Status Report on Road Safety, Thailand had one of the 10 highest road traffic fatality rates in the world. It also has the highest rate of motorcycle-related deaths in the world: the equivalent of 60 deaths a day.
Over the past few years, significant efforts have been made in Bangkok to reduce speeding. The vision is for the city to lead the rest of the country towards better road safety by championing attempts to reduce speeding and improve traffic safety measures. The Bangkok Metropolitan Authorities (BMA) have tackled the issue through three approaches: policy, enforcement and education.
On legislation, local agencies used a baseline assessment of road safety laws and regulations to understand existing laws and gaps. This work benefitted from good existing data on three road safety risk factors – speed, helmets and seat-belt use – which are currently collected annually from 74 provinces by the Thailand Road Safety Observatory.ii The local agencies then drew from an existing national manual on road speed management to provide practical guidance to provinces and local authorities on new options for improving road safety in the city.
To improve speed limit enforcement, the BMA installed speed-guns to better monitor vehicle speeds throughout the city. The new equipment was introduced to coincide with Songkran (the Thai New Year), when there are typically higher numbers of road users and more road traffic incidents.
Collaboration has been essential to this initiative. The BMA have strong partnerships with several agency networks to develop capacity, including the World Health Organization, the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety, and the Partnership for Healthy Cities. They also worked to involve other local departments. The Traffic and Transportation Department was included in the design of infrastructural measures to prevent speeding, such as traffic bollards, and local traffic police help enforce speed limits in certain city areas. Police also worked to improve convictions for drink-driving, and the level of fines for this offence was increased.
In Bangkok and more generally across Thailand, public awareness on road safety is a continual challenge since it is not perceived as a major issue. However, several strong communication campaigns have been run within the city to raise awareness. These have been integrated with national-level campaigns, maximizing the outreach and impact of the work at both levels. One campaign featured the Prime Minister himself taking a selfie wearing a seatbelt while in the back seat of his government vehicle.
Through this work, Bangkok demonstrated the importance of proactive city-level action, the variety of ways that cities can tackle road safety, and the need to combine policy, enforcement and education to ensure meaningful progress on road safety.