Alcohol firms 'also responsible' for road accidents

As the key player in supporting the road accident reduction project, the Thai Health Promotion Foundation's director Dr Suppakorn Buasai talks with The Nation on why so many people continue to die or are injured during the holiday period.

As your organisation has done so much campaigning to raise awareness about road accidents, why is the number of fatalities from road accidents still high?

Suppakorn: There are three root causes of road accidents in Thailand. The first is related to the infrastructure problem in the country, especially to the bad quality of the roads. It was disappointing that the government did not invest more money in mass transportation systems, like Japan, which installed a rapid train link between cities more than 30 years ago without the pressure of road accidents. Meanwhile, Thailand has invested a lot of money to build roads for personal car users instead of mass transportation.

In my opinion, the second root cause is the behaviour of Thai road users. As you know, Thais do not have any discipline in their car use. Even if they have driven for years, many do not know and understand much about the rules of road use.

And even if they understand the regulations, they tend to ignore them and not comply with the law because its enforcement is not strong enough. So I think it is not enough to ask people to have more respect for the law, we also have to ask the police to be stricter in controlling the roads.

The third root cause is drunk driving. I think drinking alcohol has become the new culture in Thai society. I am not sure that it was caused by the marketing strategy of alcohol companies to expand this culture across the country, particularly during times of celebration. But the companies gained much from sales during these holidays, so they should have more social responsibility by not pushing the consumption of alcohol products.

During the past four years we've seen the number of road accidents declining, but drunk driving still remains the main cause of these accidents. Do you think the government should amend traffic laws to make penalties more severe for those who violate the law?

Suppakorn : I think we have to focus on three issues that directly cause road accidents, instead of amending the traffic law. The three issues are alcohol consumption, excessive speed, and not using safety devices. Campaigning alone is not enough to control alcohol consumption; we also must control the marketing strategies of alcohol companies, especially alcohol product advertising in the broadcast and print media.

The alcohol consumption bill has been in force since last year, but so far it has lacked implementation by relevant agencies that control advertising and marketing promotion of liquor products. Under this law, two committees were set up to deal with alcohol problems but there has been no meeting so far to discuss public alcohol consumption during the past year.

In your opinion, what are the most effective measures in reducing road accidents?

We have established the Road Safety Centre to oversee the road accident issue nationwide. This centre is under the Ministry of the Interior but it is a temporary centre and depends on the resolution of the Cabinet. I think the government should make the centre legally permanent so it will have official authority to control an accident strategy across the country, cooperating with other relevant agencies in handling the issue.

Furthermore, I think we should conduct in-depth research to look at the exact cause of road accidents to find out the right approach to resolving this problem.

In the past year, the Thai Health Promotion Foundation spent Bt180 million to support the campaign to reduce road accidents; but for the whole of last year the number of road accident fatalities dropped only 11 per cent, 28 per cent in the New Year holiday, and 44.8 per cent in Songkran festivities. This is why we have to develop measures to reduce the number of road accidents for the whole year, not for only the holiday breaks.