The Department of Land Transport is pulling out the big guns and getting tough on the taxi drivers who are “hurting the image of tourism in Thailand”.
Lifetime bans will be handed out to any drivers found to be threatening passengers’ welfare and engaging in criminality — with no opportunities given to regain their licences at a later date, reports Thairath (via Thaivisa).
In a bid to tackle any potential ‘problem’ drivers early, all taxi drivers will also be subject to criminal background checks too.
One such driver has already been hit with a ban and the permanent removal of his licence – Wachara Thanoi was already known to the authorities for refusing to use the meter, and was later discovered to have overcharged and hurt a Turkish tourist.
The Department of Land Transport encourage taxi users to continue proactively reporting drivers indulging in such behaviours. You can report them to the authorities using the below mediums:
- 24 hour hotline: Call 1584
- Online: Department of Land Transport
- Line: 1584dlt
- Email: dlt_1584complain@hotmail.com
And in other road-related news…
WHO report documents Thailand’s road safety stats
The World Health Organisation released their 2015 Global Status Report on Road Safety relatively recently, and the results for Thailand are sobering.
Here are the salient points:
- There are over 32 million registered vehicles in the Kingdom (in a population of 67 million)
- Over 14,000 road traffic fatalities in 2012 – 79% male, 21% female
- Estimated WHO road traffic fatalities rate is 36.2 per 100,000 population
- The reduction target is less than 10 fatalities per 100,000 population (between 2010 to 2020)
- 3% estimated GDP loss due to road crashes
- 26% of road traffic deaths involve alcohol
- 58% of motorbike drivers wear helmets
- 20% of motorbike passengers wear helmets
- Riders on motorised 2 or 3 wheelers account for 73% of road traffic deaths
Featured image is by m-louis .® and used under a CC BY-SA licence
