Three-year-old dies after being left in school van

[PeteC]

From the Bangkok Post letter section this morning:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/post ... en-at-risk

"Children at risk
Post Publishing PCL.

A key reason we have the world's second-highest road fatality rate is because drivers and owners are not held to be sufficiently accountable for their misdeeds.

Thus, for example, when a five-year-old student fell from a school bus in Tak a few days ago, the driver was handed a mere 1,500-baht fine for having no driver's licence, and the vehicle's owner was fined only 2,000 baht for operating a vehicle with out-of-date registration and which hadn't been inspected. These paltry fines neither punish violators nor encourage compliance with the law. These major offences involving a public vehicle should attract mandatory jail time.

Also, seriously overloading school vehicles is common, with kids even seated on rooftops. Kids baking to death from being locked in vans has recently been in the news; motion detectors are inexpensive and should be required in all enclosed vehicles for primary school students.

The Land Transport Department has been doing a very poor job, year-in, year-out: hence the high fatality rate. Why hasn't the director-general been put out to pasture?

Burin Kantabutra"