Car, motorbike and van breakdown cover simply doesn’t mean anything in some countries. Take Thailand for instance. A beautiful, crazy country, but one that makes Italian driving habits look positively sedate. If you spend a lot of time driving around Thailand, especially at night, the chances are you’ll need an emergency service before a breakdown provider gets anywhere near you.
And breakdown assistance isn’t likely to arrive in the glowing oranges of a knight-in-shining-armour startrescue.co.uk recovery agent, it is more likely to come in the form of a 50 year-old pick-up truck driven by a smiling Thai man for whom traffic regulations are little more than an amusing thing that farang (foreigners) obsess over.
If you’ve ever seen Bangkok, ever stood on its smoky kerbs, with hundreds of buzzing tuk-tuks swarming past you, you’ll know that it is not the safest city to drive in, or indeed be a pedestrian in. It’s not that the Thai’s are aggressive or impolite – the exact opposite in fact, given their Buddhist background – but ‘calm’ driving or ‘Sunday afternoon driving’ of any kind is unlikely to draw the famous Thai smile.
The driving situation in Bangkok has been made even more insane by the fact that the direction of lanes can suddenly switch (to accommodate volumes of traffic coming the other way), which can create massive clots of congestion.
But driving in the capital city is considered tame compared to the hazards faced by rural drivers – especially at night. The combination of often-faulty vehicles, no lighting and no cats eyes has made motoring at this time a dice with death.
So next time you’re cut up on the mild roads of Britain, try to remember just how dangerous some drivers in other countries have it!