From an article in the Thaiger last January:
"The
Centre for Alcohol Studies (CAS) urged relevant departments to consider setting the
blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for
drivers in
Thailand at
0%,
instead of 0.05%, because drivers with 0.05% of BAC in their system still cause fatal road accidents.
The legal BAC is set at 0.05% in Thailand. This means that motorists in the country can drive if their BAC is less than 0.05%, or 50 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. This is the equivalent of two glasses of wine or beer.
The vice president of the CAS, Ponthep Wijitkunakorn, used a recent fatal road accident that killed five victims in the Isaan province of Sisaket to emphasise why the legal limit for a driver’s blood alcohol level needed to be changed.
The driver, 30 year old Likit Tarut, crashed his sedan into a motorcycle and then ran across the traffic island and hit another black sedan car. The motorcycle rider, the driver of the black sedan, and four passengers were all pronounced dead at the scene. Likit was tested, and his alcohol blood level was below 0.05%."
So, the driver in that horrific accident was not shown to be drunk, nor was his driving said to have been impaired by alcohol - merely that his blood alcohol level was below the limit. It could have been 0% and this will certainly be the case for many of Thailand's drivers who have fatal accidents. The argument that BAC limits must be changed to 0% has little - if any - relevance to this case.
I'm definitely not an apologist for drink-driving, nor for idiots behind the wheel who are incapable of controlling their vehicles simply because it is beyond their ability to do so. Untrained and stupid, driving without regard for the conditions. It is a pity that the official statistics don't seem to provide a category for these in their reports of traffic incidents such as death and injury. If the authorities focused on ensuring that all drivers exercise the appropriate driving skills, then such incidents would have a far greater impact on making Thai roads safer places to be, and reducing the carnage recorded year on year.