Australian consultancy working on road safety in Thailand

Over the course of the past three years, Australian road safety consultancy Safe System Solutions has supported policymakers in Thailand with reducing fatal crashes across the country by nearly 60%.

SSS was brought on board by Thailand’s Department of Rural Roads (DRR) to help tackle the growing menace of road accidents in Thailand. The road fatality rate in the country is among the highest in the globe, with the World Health Organisation reporting that more than 32 people per 100,000 die in a road accident in Thailand each year.

Based out of Australia, Safe System Solutions is a road safety consultancy that offers a variety of services, including auditing, technical design, project development and a range of training efforts.

In a bid to learn from best practices in Australia – the country has managed to achieve a 60% dip in fatalities over the last three decades – DRR invited Safe System Solutions to offer specialised training courses in Bangkok. The firm started with two award winning courses, and has since delivered three more, including courses such as Advance Road Safety Auditing, and Crash Investigation & Reconstruction.

Knowledge gained from these sessions has then been implemented in more than 900 locations across Thailand’s road network. The changes have come in the form of policy reform, which according to DRR’s statistics have played a pivotal role in reducing road accidents and fatalities in the country. New policies have led to a 57% dip in fatal accidents and a 60% dip in accidents that caused serious injury.

Commenting on the work done in Thailand, Tana Tan, a training professional at Safe System Solutions, said: “One of the key factors in working successfully with another country is being sensitive to their business etiquette, developing an understanding of their culture and understanding the client’s aims, needs and values.”

Principal Engineer Kenn Beer further unpacked, “The building of trust occurs differently in various countries. In Thailand, this trust is developed both in the office and over social occasions such as dinners. As we don’t have an office in Thailand, we had to find another way to build this trust.”