Thailand: Child crashes vehicle into group of monks

A child drove his parents' pickup truck into a group of Buddhist monks on a pilgrimage walk in northeastern Thailand on Thursday, police said. 

What do we know about the incident? 

Mukdahan province's Governor Waorrayan Boonarat said that five people were killed at the scene and three more died of their injuries in hospital, while another 14 were wounded. 

Local police said that the boy was in custody and the cause of the crash was under investigation. They said that the monks reported seeing the vehicle losing balance before sliding off the road and crashing into the group. 

Where did this happen? 

A group of 35 monks and five lay followers were walking along the roadside on a pilgrimage in the region, about 600 kilometers (roughly 375 miles) northeast of the capital Bangkok.                        

Mukdahan province is in Isan, a rural area in the Mekong Delta that borders Laos that is Thailand's poorest region.

Home to around 350,000 people, Mukdahan is one of Thailand's smaller, least populated and less densely populated provinces. 

How dangerous are Thai roads? 

Thailand's reputation for road safety has markedly improved in the last few years, but its roads are among the most dangerous in the world.

According the the World Health Organization (WHO), Thailand ranks ninth out of 175 countries in terms of road traffic deaths.

In 2021, the UN health body registered over 18,200 deaths, around 50 per day, due to road traffic incidents.

While highways and major roads tend to be fairly well maintained and paved, standards can drop considerably on more rural and minor routes. 

Similarly, the road network is used by all manner of vehicles of various ages, sometimes in fairly urgent need of maintenance or being used to carry heavy loads or larger numbers of people than the manufacturers intended.

According to the Thai government's figures for 2024, almost 20 people per 100,000 were killed in road traffic incidents. That's a considerable improvement on statistics from just a few years prior, but it is also more than six times the German figure of just over three people per 100,000. 

In May, a collision at a rail crossing in the capital Bangkok caused at least eight deaths. 

Edited by: Karl Sexton

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