The Count: 102 reported dead during first two ‘deadly days’

Road accident in Ayutthaya last year. Photo: Thailand Accident Research Center

The fun of Songkran wouldn’t be the same without morbid, daily dispatches on the highway butcher’s bill.

In the first two of the Seven Dangerous Days, or Deathweek, 102 fatalities and 491 injuries have been reported from 850 accidents, according to road safety officials.

Booze was the biggest factor, blamed for about 38 percent of accidents. Driving too fast was faultd for 25 percent. Motorcyclists took the most abuse – 81 percent of all accidents involved one, with pickup trucks in the mix 10 percent of the time.

Unlike the typical dispatch, which fails to offer any meaningful context, here’s a fact: In 2013, 321 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured.

But how does that compare to any other weekend’s body count on Thai roads?

Difficult to say, but according to the Global Road Safety Partnership’s most recent data of 2006, 12,069 people died in road accidents that year, or 33 people per day.

So these past two days would be about three times the daily road deaths from eight years ago, if one were to make a broad, scientifically unsound generalization.