A Traffic Event In Ubon Ratchathani

I was sitting at the bus stop in front of Lotus waiting for the Line 12 songtaew to come. A lady passed in front of me on a motorcycle pulling a cart going in the wrong direction against traffic. As it's a normal occurrence here in Ubon Ratchathani, I thought nothing of it. Suddenly, I was startled from my daydream by a loud crashing sound. The sound was similar to the noise made when you drop a lead pipe from a height onto concrete. But in actuality a pick up truck had run into the motorcycle I had just observed driving by in front of me.

I have often heard an event such as this called an accident. I did a search on the web and at Freedictionary online I found the following definition, "accident - anything that happens by chance or without a cause." According to that what I saw was no accident. I will call it an event. The lady was driving the wrong way up the road, the man in the pick up turned into the Lotus entrance from the second lane. Both were at fault.

Fortunately, nobody was injured. This was a minor event. I do believe, however, that the motorcycle and cart will never be the same again. These things happen when two people do what they want to do without regard to the laws. Such occurrences are inevitable when people drive as though they are the only person on the road. I don't see how either could have missed seeing the other but it seems it happened.

At the very least the two drivers are guilty of defying an irrefutable law of physics, "no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time." The laws of physics are unforgiving. They have been proven time and time again. I have no idea what these two drivers were thinking but I do know what this event was no accident as per the given definition and could have been easily avoided.

Is driving school in their future? Did they learn anything? Will either of them do anything similar in the future? In my opinion it should be back to school for these two with mandatory enrollment in Physics 101 to help make my home town Ubon Ratchathani a safer place to live.

Thai Phrase of the Post:

How long will it take to repair the car?

Chai welaa som naan praman thao rai?