Standard Thai Traffic Lights
Recently I circulated some articles from the internet about avoiding letting a motor vehicle idle when waiting, with the message being that turning off the motor saves money and reduces pollution.
I have now prepared a one page A4 document, suitable for printing and cutting into 3 strips to give away. The text together with cartoon drawings can be found here – View and download the Red Light English text & image here
ไฟแดง ! Thai text version
Here is an example of the text.
RED LIGHT !Don’t wait in exhaust pollution!
PLEASE Turn off the motor of your car
If your wait will exceed 10* seconds.
This will SAVE YOU MONEY. Research has shown this saves fuel and vehicle maintenance costs. & SAVE YOUR HEALTH and that of your companions. (Road intersections have the most polluted air in Chiang Mai a polluted city) & RESIST CHIANG MAI WARMING.
N.B. Air-con units work efficiently when a car is moving along, poorly when a car is idling.
* For large trucks and buses this should read 30 seconds. For more information write to gumhakdoisuthep@yahoo.com
Please feel free to print and copy these for your friends and acquaintances.
The next step is to do the same in Thai.
Your suggestions as to how to proceed further with this idea are welcome.
Sorry the download is not yet available & has a spelling mistake
It says “turn of your motor” corrected above to “turn off your motor”
Double sorry – The download was slow on my computer but it does work.
Thank goodness we have almost no tourists in town! The suddenly increased traffic jams would by now have brought peak period gridlock to Chiang Mai. The reason is, of course, the dramatic fall in Thai petrol prices which have brought a huge number of Thai ‘marginal motorists’ back onto the roads.
Those people who, in September, were leaving their cars at home and catching long distance seelors for maybe the first time in their adult lives! (Did you know that the out-of-town seelors all brought DOWN their fares at the first big reduction in fuel prices? Wow!).
Now, we see and breath in these folk in every jam at every red light. Normally a car older than 11 or 12 years; normally exuding more black or blue smoke than average; likely to hang around at low speed in the outside lane (planning to make a right turn in Lampang!); unlikely to use mirrors and indicators properly, if at all, and generally driving at a lower standard than most others on the road. Especially on Saturdays!!
The Land Transport Dept boasted over a year ago that they had the equipment to test exhaust emissions. I have seen this done once since on Superhighway, northbound into Chiang Mai. I have never seen it done in the city OR on any of the worst offenders, the red city-centre seelors.
Lastly, if we want to kill MORE people in Chiang Mai city, let’s go and paint bicycle lanes all over the central roads! The greenhorn tourist bikers (still a few coming here) will love them, use them, believe in their safety, and die.
Have we already forgotten the tragedy of the couple in Bangkok, first time visitors from Norway (?) who believed in the (then) insane innovation of carrying little Thai language lollypop sticks across pedestrian crossings, showing they had right of way? They were fatally flattened in seconds by a Bkk Municipal road roller which when tested later, was found to have NO BRAKES!
In Chiang Mai we already have far more than our fair share of fast, loony, farang cyclists and slow, untrained, locals. They all think the laws of red lights and one way streets do not apply to them – and many use their obvious vulnerability as a weapon.
What their dull, untutored brains have yet to comprehend (and might, in their last few milliseconds, splattered on the hard tarmac) is:
a) in the traffic heirarchy of Thailand, cyclists are second up from zero only to pedestrians. Even monks crossing the roads often have to RUN for it! And
b) re the idea of biking the WRONG way against traffic (bike lanes or no bike lanes): The main hazard here is not from approaching traffic, but from vehicles and pedestrians coming out from side roads with NO expectation of anyone approaching from the wrong direction! This is NOT rocket science. It is reality. It also utterly flies in the face of the good road rules we wish to see imposed and observed here.
Sadly, we well intentioned folk will NOT change these habits, even in the lifetimes of our children. !f we live long enough to have any.
(NB: The writer holds the top civilian advanced road driving qualification from his own nation, and has driven, accident free, in 33 nations on 4 continents for 44 years. He has driven accident free in Thailand since 1988 and now averages 350km weekly in and around Chiang Mai).
How about making some colourful signs that would inform people of how much they would save in gas money and, more importantly, in emissions, if they cut their engines when in stationary traffic. These could be hung from some of the worst junctions and we might start influencing some positive changes.
I could probably get my students at school to make them but I’d like to do the whole thing as officially as possible.
Does anyone know whose permission we’d need to get to hang such things?
cheers
dave
MOnday 26th January 2009 1.00 pm
Meeting on Air Pollution issues of Community Groups
Dave’s suggestion on intersection signs needs to be adopted and passed on to provincial & city officials.
We will make and hang the signs…in the name of community action… all we need to know is where and from whome we would get permission.
Anyone’s help will be appreciated.
cheers
dave