Thai driving is mad. As I've discussed before, Thai drivers, especially those on motorbikes (who seem to the the large majority) weave in and out of traffic, drive on the wrong side of the road, blow red lights, and generally behave as though there were no one else on the street. Generally, it works out. In my experience, it often seems to be a more efficient driving style. If every one of the katrillion motorbikers in Surat followed the rules of the road and behaved the way cars are expected to (stay in your lane, don't weave to the front of the line at a traffic light, don't drive on the sidewalk...) traffic would be nightmarish and no one would get anywhere. The roads just aren't big enough for it. So to some extent, I get it.
But there's no avoiding the obvious fact: motorbiking here is really dangerous. It's liberating and relaxing and fantastically fun, but it's really dangerous. You're probably going to crash at some point. You need a helmet.
But Thai people, apparently fifty-three percent of those who regularly drive motorbikes, don't wear helmets. Anecdotally, it seems to be at least that high. Considering that many people only put one on when they see a cop, or ride around with the chinstrap unbuckled (rendering the helmet entirely useless in preventing anything but a fine), the number of people who are effectively without a helmet must be much higher. This is why Thailand has the world's worst motorbike fatality rate, with eleven thousand people dying annually because they didn't want to mess up their hair (or whatever-no excuse is a good one).
The worst is the kids. Fine, you're an adult, do you thing, but your seven-year-old needs a helmet. End of story. But it's actually pretty rare to see kids wearing them. Pretty much daily, I see passengers holding entirely unprotected infants on the back of the bike, or a parent in a helmet (presumably only to avoid a ticket) ferrying two or three kids on the back without a helmet between them. It makes me shudder to think of what could happen if they hit a bump.
It's not only helmets, either. Thailand seems to have a general lack of concern for safety. You'll see ten people in the back of a speeding pickup truck, one seated on the rusted and precariously attached tailgate. Boats shuttling tourists around and between the islands will brave absurd waves, and occasionally you hear a story with a tragic, rocky ending. Children crawl around the front seat of the car or ride on the driver's lap.
People more intimately acquainted with Thai culture have told me that this cavalier attitude towards danger in rooted in some fundamental elements of the national character. Thai people are generally, about all things, very relaxed. They just don't worry about possible negative outcomes the way most Westerners do. One expat, here for a decade and married to a Thai woman, told me that they tend not to think in terms of cause and effect; if you crash your bike while not wearing a helmet and get a concussion, they will tend not to blame the concussion on the lack of a helmet. Since you couldn't have forseen the accident, they assume you couldn't have prepared for it, so there was nothing you could have done to avoid the injury. It was out of your hands.
That's another piece of the Thai psyche: superstition. You don't need a helmet, or a seatbelt, or to not get on that old wooden boat in a storm, because you won't die until it's your time to die. When it's your time, there's nothing you can do anyway, so why worry. They hop on the bike and trust the universe to do the job of a helmet.
While I admire the Thai stress-free attitude towards life and embrace it in matters of work and play, I can't get on board with this one. Seeing my five-year-old students roll up to the school on the back of a motorbike, their tiny heads unprotected, makes it hard to smile at their parents. The universe won't help you out here. Put on a helmet.
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