SB's team's Thailand adventure seems to be back on with the protesters and remaining government coming to a compromise and clearing out the airport. His team will be hosted by the Thai navy, and will be staying on the base and riding around in trucks. Being perpetually 14 years old at heart he is waaay too excited at the prospect of riding around in the bed of some canopied jalopy. I have been biting my tongue, but I am worried and am trying to find a way to express this to him without coming off as one of those people. I have a lot of concerns about him riding around in traffic, perched on the side of a truck.
My family moved to Bangkok in the late 1990s for a couple years because my father was asked to work on a resolution for the worst congestion in the world. The solution was partially successful. The implementation of mechanized traffic signals brought outrage to the local police, who supplemented their incomes through traffic bribes to keep certain lanes of traffic flowing at certain times for certain individuals (you can imagine what happens when a light at a busy intersection does not change for fifteen minutes). The police came out in full force when the traffic signals were unveiled, wading into traffic to interfere with the signals and cause as much confusion and congestion as possible. They claimed that the signals were a failure. In the typical style of the government, the police were rewarded for their behavior when the parliament agreed that the traffic signals were no good and resumed appointing police to manually operate the traffic signals and so these simple and relatively inexpensive efforts to solve some of the worst traffic congestion in the world were thwarted. My father still becomes apoplectic when he thinks about how much money was wasted, not to mention time and effort.
The next step was to construct a superhighway. A large group of German contractors arrived with massive and impressive machinery to load giant slabs of highway onto their bearings. I enjoyed watching the construction unfold. What I also noticed was the alarmingly high number of traffic fatalities. Every day that I came to the site to poke around I passed accident scenes, some with the bodies still there, partially covered in newspaper. I found out that one of the Germans was sent home to recuperate after he began exhibiting signs of stress. One evening some coworkers had gone home with him and he pulled out some photo albums but instead of pictures of family, or work progress, he showed album after album of dead motorists that he had captured from the bird's eye view of the superhighway.
I felt that the locals seemed almost accepting of so many traffic deaths occurring each day in their city. I was not aware of any effort to make drivers more attuned of traffic safety. Regulations also seemed nonexistent, or at least easily overcome, such as the fact that chauffeurs were required to have licenses and our first driver could not even get the car in gear. His only driving experience, to my mind, was that once the car finally was beaten into submission and moving forward, all he had to do was simply aim and accelerate. It seemed like there was only one sure ending to this and I did not want to be in the two ton death machine when it happened. My father raised hell with the agency that supplied the driver (who according to the agency had five years of driving under his belt) and we got a new driver who was much better and did a great job right up until he stole the company car.
I want SB to have a great time but if it were up to me he would be safely fastened to the vehicle. Maybe I should find that German man and borrow his albums.
My family moved to Bangkok in the late 1990s for a couple years because my father was asked to work on a resolution for the worst congestion in the world. The solution was partially successful. The implementation of mechanized traffic signals brought outrage to the local police, who supplemented their incomes through traffic bribes to keep certain lanes of traffic flowing at certain times for certain individuals (you can imagine what happens when a light at a busy intersection does not change for fifteen minutes). The police came out in full force when the traffic signals were unveiled, wading into traffic to interfere with the signals and cause as much confusion and congestion as possible. They claimed that the signals were a failure. In the typical style of the government, the police were rewarded for their behavior when the parliament agreed that the traffic signals were no good and resumed appointing police to manually operate the traffic signals and so these simple and relatively inexpensive efforts to solve some of the worst traffic congestion in the world were thwarted. My father still becomes apoplectic when he thinks about how much money was wasted, not to mention time and effort.
The next step was to construct a superhighway. A large group of German contractors arrived with massive and impressive machinery to load giant slabs of highway onto their bearings. I enjoyed watching the construction unfold. What I also noticed was the alarmingly high number of traffic fatalities. Every day that I came to the site to poke around I passed accident scenes, some with the bodies still there, partially covered in newspaper. I found out that one of the Germans was sent home to recuperate after he began exhibiting signs of stress. One evening some coworkers had gone home with him and he pulled out some photo albums but instead of pictures of family, or work progress, he showed album after album of dead motorists that he had captured from the bird's eye view of the superhighway.
I felt that the locals seemed almost accepting of so many traffic deaths occurring each day in their city. I was not aware of any effort to make drivers more attuned of traffic safety. Regulations also seemed nonexistent, or at least easily overcome, such as the fact that chauffeurs were required to have licenses and our first driver could not even get the car in gear. His only driving experience, to my mind, was that once the car finally was beaten into submission and moving forward, all he had to do was simply aim and accelerate. It seemed like there was only one sure ending to this and I did not want to be in the two ton death machine when it happened. My father raised hell with the agency that supplied the driver (who according to the agency had five years of driving under his belt) and we got a new driver who was much better and did a great job right up until he stole the company car.
I want SB to have a great time but if it were up to me he would be safely fastened to the vehicle. Maybe I should find that German man and borrow his albums.
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