New Year drunk drivers face jail term
Cops pledge crackdown during festival period
* Published: 3/12/2009 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News
Motorists caught driving while drunk over the New Year period face being jailed with no chance of a suspended sentence, law enforcement officials say.
Representatives of the police, the courts and the high profile Don't Drive Drunk Foundation agreed yesterday at a meeting that enforcement would be tougher than ever this year and warned that prison sentences would be strictly enforced.
Foundation manager Surasit Silapa-ngarm said road accidents caused by drunk drivers had increased every year for the past three years with the average annual toll of 12,067 deaths resulting in economic losses of 240 billion baht.
Road accidents over the New Year period tend to be more than double normal times, Mr Surasit said.
Over the past two years, there were 280 road accidents and 35 deaths a day on average in Thailand.
The number of road accidents last year rose to 607 a day during the New Year festival. About 84% of the accidents involved motorcycles while drink driving was responsible for 41% of crashes, Mr Surasit said.
He said launching campaigns alone could not halt the New Year carnage. As had been found in some areas, it required the courts to impose harsher penalties on drunk motorists.
Courts in Region 2, which covers Chon Buri and other eastern provinces, were the first to hand out jail terms with no suspension of the sentence to drivers found guilty of drinking while driving, he said. A total of 155 drunk motorists had been put behind bars from July 2008 to September this year, he said.
Prasong Mahaleetrakul, a lower court judge attached to the Office of the Supreme Court, said motorists found with an alcohol reading of 0.05 would appear in court within 48 hours.
They would face a jail term and a fine of 5,000 to 20,000 baht and would have their driving licences suspended for at least six months or even completely revoked.
He said more courts in other regions were starting to send drink-driving offenders to jail without the possibility of a suspended sentence.
The tough measure was launched by Thung Mahamek police station in Bangkok which has recorded the highest number of drunk driving arrests since it began a serious approach to enforcing the law.
The station regularly sets up checkpoints on main roads and minor sois to catch people driving under the influence of alcohol, said Pol Maj-Gen Anuchai Lekbamrung, chief of the Metropolitan Police Bureau's Division 5.