The Outsider's Guide to Thailand - by Oliver Benjamin - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - DRIVING ME CRAZY

Unique Thai driving habits - a critical review

Like most soft-hearted, wholegrained liberals, I think it’s important to try and accept the idiosyncrasies of other cultures, even when those idiosyncrasies are truly idiotic.

But that’s only valid as long as we’re talking about cute little quirks that harm no one –like French people going topless in public or African tribesmen jamming dinnerware in their dangly bits. But when a culture’s behavior borders on the flagrantly dangerous, even a muffin-headed hippie must put a Birkenstocked foot down and say “Dude, it’s not ALL good.”It is usually at this point that the United Nations gets involved.

Which is why I think it’s about time that the UN immediately draft a resolution, insisting that Thai people learn how to drive properly. The mortality rate from traffic accidents here is so high it practically constitutes genocide. Something must be done, and fast –if not for the sake of peace and humanity and all we hold dear, then just for the sake of my social life. I’m afraid to leave my goddamn house.

Don’t get me wrong –Thais aren’t the only people in the world that drive badly. It’s just that they could drive so much better. It seems to me that Thais are a considerate and controlled people, not nearly as hot-blooded and irresponsible as many of the world’s great driving nations. I, for example, hail from Los Angeles, where many drivers employ handguns more often than they do their turn signal. And despite lingering Western stereo-types about Asians, people in Thailand are actually very skilled at handling motor vehicles. Where else can a drunk fourteen year old girl zip through traffic on a 50cc moped while talking on her cell phone to two friends directly behind her, sitting sideways, with a small, terrified dog? They shouldn’t be on the street –they should be in the circus.

So to prevent an inevitable peacekeeping invasion by UN police, I suggest that Thais review the following key points and modify their driving habits accordingly. Then we can all live in peace with the secure feeling that we won’t have to ever entrust our lives to amphetamine-addled ambulance drivers whose standard operating procedure is 1) shake unconscious victim violently to see if he or she is still alive, and then 2) transport now-dying victim to a hospital fifty kilometers away because they pay the highest kickbacks.

1) The Left Hand Turn of God

By far the most common driving transgression made here. At least three times a day I have to hit my brakes and curse the back of someone’s cheerful, oblivious head because they turned right in front of me without even looking so see if anyone was coming. I’m sure this stems from a belief in the cooperative, accommodating manners of Thai people, but it’s often hard to be accommodating when you’re flying down the superhighway at 100 kilometers an hour.

2) The Freedom Lane

Every road here has it. It’s that imaginary lane on the far left where anything goes and everything is possible. Teenagers drive motorcycles the wrong way. Adults double-park trucks bigger than their houses. Vendors gingerly push ice-cream trolleys, stopping for languid roadside service to aforementioned unmoving trucks. Evil song taews swerve in front of you at the slightest hint of a customer. Worst of all, if you drive too slowly down this lane late at night you run the risk of being yanked off your bike by an impatient lady-boy. The point: too much freedom is a bad thing.

But if you drive in the far-right lane, speed junkies in tricked-out

Toyotas will smash into you from behind. The Buddha was right

–always take the middle lane. If there is one.

3) Consequential Drift

Seen from above, traffic in Thailand must look like a great undulating mass of protoplasm. Everyone drifts here and there, changing lanes, it seems, more for reasons of boredom than purpose.

As if they just want to see what it’s like in your lane. Or on the sidewalk. Or the other side of the street. Motorcyclists are especially foolhardy. You’d think that most humans hurtling through space at sixty kilometers an hour might want to see what it was they were hurtling into. Not so with many Thais, who incorrectly presume that what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

4) The Light is Always Greener on the Other Side

Lemmings are animals that will literally follow each other off of a cliff. So too, will citizens of this fine country continue to make right turns at high speeds through a traffic light that turned red ten cars in front of them. A few times I have actually missed my own green light when this discourteous exercise of power-innumbers would simply not end. Worse, last week I was nearly run over by a young girl making a squealing right turn in a huge truck on a light that went red a full five seconds earlier. Outside of misanthropy or colorblindness, there is simply no excuse for this.

5) Horde of the Flies

There’s certainly a status hierarchy among drivers here: The more expensive your vehicle the more weight you pull and the more deference you deserve. Consequently the student on a rusted-out Honda Dream is pretty low on the totem pole. However, like rebels everywhere, those diminutive James Deans make sure to flaunt the virtues of their freedom any chance they get. Mostly they do this by resolutely making sure they’re always out in front of traffic. The result is that the swarm of freewheeling motorcycles end up blocking the left turn lane. Or sticking out so far into the street that perpendicular traffic is blocked. Or wedging in so tightly between cars that the line of traffic behind them takes forever to get going. And of course, once things do start to flow there’s always one show-off who treats the whole thing like a slalom course, weaving in and out of lanes with all the enviable skill and bravery of a serial killer. And then, to everyone’s surprise, he crashes and things slow to a halt once again.

6) The Brain Bowl

Kudos to the kind Thai police who now regularly check to make sure people are wearing their safety helmets. It’s heartwarming that they routinely devote their entire day of police work just to protect the lives of their countryfolk. Consequently, I am always happy to pay whatever fines they demand, secure in the knowledge that the funds go toward other equally-effective safety programs. I have but one quibble: The helmets most drivers wear are barely sturdy enough to serve som tam, the spicier varieties of which could eat right through the thin plastic. In most cases, a headscarf would offer more protection. I seem to remember a recent controversy in which Sikh men were unable to wear helmets because their religion mandated they wear a turban. But I’d rather have a big Sikh hair helmet than one of the Tupperware turbans worn by everyone else. At most, these just make the brains easier to scoop up.

So those are my suggestions for a brighter, safer tomorrow.

Forgive me if you find my sentiments culturally insensitive, but driving is not a culture –just as a car is not a toy and an inflatable doll is not a companion. If Thailand wants to become a first-world country filled with endless rows of gleaming cars, six-lane superhighways, lethal pollution, road rage and gigantic gas-guzzling vehicles, then it’s going to have to toe the line and do as developed countries do: pay the police more so that they’ll throw people in jail for not using their turn signal, ensure that car insurance costs as much as one’s mortgage, and make driving tests so difficult that driving schools will rival the best universities. Finally, to make sure everyone drives with the utmost care and courtesy, handguns should be made a lot more easy to obtain.

(End of Chapter 1.)

Oliver Benjamin

© Oliver Benjamin. All rights reserved by the author.

ISBN: 978-974-88178-66

----------------------------
If you enjoyed this first chapter of Oliver Benjamin's 'The Outsider's Guide to Thailand' you can easily purchase the book online here at Bangkok Books.com: http://www.bangkokbooks.com/php/product/product.php?product_id=000040&sub_cate_name=&sub_cate_id= 

Most books published by Bangkok Book House are available at Asia Books, Bookazine, B2S, Kinokuniya, Suriwong Chiang Mai, DK Chiang Mai, Pattaya, Lampang; all airports, many hotel outlets, supermarkets (Villa, Friendship Pattaya), The Books (Phuket, Krabi), Singapore including airport, Hong Kong airport and many smaller independent outlets throughout Thailand.

All rights for this book preview are reserved by the author. Reprint permission came from the publishing house Bangkok Book House (www.bangkokbooks.com).