Chonburi suffered one of is deadliest New Year’s holidays on record, with 33 people killed on the province’s roads during the “seven dangerous days”, 25 of them in one wreck.
Speaking during a Jan. 5 video conference with Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda, Gov. Pakarathorn Thienchai said the province’s Road Accident Prevention and Reduction Cooperation Center recorded nine fatalities in seven wrecks in addition to the horrific Jan. 2 collision between a passenger van and a pickup truck in Ban Bung District that also left two people injured.
One of those fatalities came in Pattaya Dec. 30 when a 15-year-old lost control of his motorbike during an illegal street race in Jomtien Beach.
In all, the road-safety center reported 14 accidents in six districts that injured 10 and killed 18 males and 15 females between Dec. 29 and Jan. 4.
Banglamung District recorded seven wrecks, while Sattahip had a crash that killed one and hurt another. Sriracha recorded two fatal accidents, Panthong one and Bo Thong had two wrecks, with one killed and two hurt.
Ban Bung saw the fatal minivan crash and one additional fatality in another wreck.
To combat road carnage, Chonburi had set up 27 checkpoints and four vehicle-service points staffed by 1,045 people, including vocational school volunteers.
More than 212,000 vehicles were stopped and, of those, 49,136 were cited for at least one traffic violation.
Of the 70,000-plus motorbikes stopped, more than one in seven riders were not wearing helmets and 4,627 were cited for unsafe motorcycles.
Nearly 1,000 people were cited for drunk driving, although the police seized only 610 vehicles province-wide during the period. More than 11,200 people were caught without a driver’s license and more than 75,300 were fined for not wearing seatbelts.
Nearly 4,200 were ticketed for speeding, 4,068 for jumping a red light, 3,043 for driving in the wrong direction and 2,118 for using a mobile phone while driving.
And all this in just 7 days. (CPRD)
