Road rage DOES exist in Thailand

An interesting little news story came up this week (ok, not like there’s not an interesting news story each day, but I digress..) about road rage in Thailand. The full story can be read below:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/24570/taxi-driver-charges-into-motorbike-killing-one

In a nutshell it reads like this:

• Taxi driver cuts off motorcyclists while driving.
• One of the motorcyclists pulls out a 32mm pistol and shoots 2 bullets into the taxi, hitting the driver in the shoulder.
• Wounded taxi driver chases motorcyclists, knocks them from their bikes. Injuries from the crash causes one of the motorcycles to die later in hospital.

When I first arrived in Thailand I couldn’t believe that road rage didn’t happen more often – it didn’t even seem to happen at all. When driving it seems you need to expect to be cut off by other drivers, and you should be doing it in return if you expect to get anywhere in any sort of reasonable time. So driving in a way that would get you punched in Australia is somewhat normal here, such as cutting to the front of a right turn queue from the centre lane, or pushing the nose of your car into the traffic causing all oncoming traffic to stop – so you can turn out. It seems to be the norm, and people barely use their horn.

Well, I guess in this case it hit the nerve of the motorcyclists (who were rumored to be gangsters on the Thai language news).

The article seems pretty critical of the taxi driver (he did kill someone after all), but not so much the motorcyclists who shot him. They were returning home from an entertainment venue – so were likely to be under the influence of alcahol.

The article helps highlight some big issues in this great country, such as poor driving, high gun ownership rates and drink driving.

What else grabbed me more about this article is how much it sounds like a scene from what could be out of a simple action movie. A hapless taxi driver gets shot by gangsters, and in a kill-or-be-killed moment takes out his attackers and flees the scene. Later due to blood loss he passes out in his taxi and is found by a friendly lady (who is also oppressed by the mafia) who treats his bullet wounds and nurses him back to his health. During his recovery he becomes interested in the girl.

Fully recovered, the driver takes his trusty taxi and rights the wrong that the mafia is causing the girl. Then they drive off in the taxi into the sunset.

Sure, the script needs some fleshing out and the cliche’s removed, but I think I’m onto something here.