Slap on a helmet, keep your child s

Slap on a helmet, keep your child safe on the road

15/01/2015
Kevin Watkins


The story is tragically familiar. Thailand has the world's second highest death rate from road crashes. Every day that passes sees another 72 lives lost. Road accidents are now the leading cause of injury and disability in Thailand.

Children are bearing the brunt of the road traffic injury epidemic. Almost 3,000 are killed each year. Tens of thousands are injured. Most of these deaths and injuries occur among children — like Danaisak — travelling as passengers on motorcycles.

As the number of cars and motorcycles on Thailand's roads rises, what can be done to save lives and protect children? That's a tough question with some surprisingly simple answers.

Let's start with helmets. One or two children sitting as passengers on motorcycles driven by their parents is a common sight in Thailand. Children wearing helmets are a less common sight. Just 7% of children travelling as passengers wear helmets. This matters because wearing a helmet cuts by two-thirds the risk of a serious head injury — and you can buy a children's helmet for just 340 baht...

...Vietnam is a much poorer country than Thailand. Yet it has dramatically reduced death and injury rates from motorcycle accidents by strong laws backed by public education and effective law enforcement. Vietnamese children are five times more likely to wear helmets than their counterparts in Thailand.

In Thailand drivers and passengers are legally required to wear helmets but the law is violated with near total impunity and a recent government campaign to promote children's use of helmets failed in spectacular fashion. The end result: Child deaths and injury continues to mount.

...a new program aims to make helmets part of the school uniform...and if laws are to be effective, they have to be enforced. The police should start getting tough on parents who allow their children to ride unprotected, imposing steep fines for repeat offenders...

Today, worldwide more than one million people die each year as a result of road traffic injuries — more than 90% of them in developing countries....

It doesn't have to be like this. Lives can be saved through the enforcement of laws that put the interests of vulnerable road users — pedestrians, cyclists and motorcycle passengers — ahead of car owners.

...Transport policy success should be measured by the safety of road users and the quality of life.

Enforcing speed limits, clamping down on drunk driving, and designing roads with a view to safety rather than speed can save lives. At a minimum, governments should work to ensure that every child is able to make a safe journey to school ..

This year, governments from around the world will agree on a new set of development goals for the post-2015 period. The current proposal includes a goal for halving deaths from road traffic injury by 2030 — an outcome that would save many millions of lives...

Thailand should support the new goal. As a country, it cannot afford to see the lives and hopes of so many families shattered by avoidable deaths...

Kevin Watkins is executive director of the Overseas Development Institute and former director of the UN Human Development Report.