Despite crackdowns on errant drivers, drink driving remains the leading cause of accidents over the past three days of the New Year long holiday with arrests up compared to the same period last year.
A 30% rise was seen in the number of drink-driving arrests from Thursday until Saturday, the first three of the so-called seven dangerous days of the holiday period, Pol Lt Gen Damrongsak Kittipraphat, an assistant to the national police chief, said Sunday.
About 6,000 breathalysers and hundreds of radar speed guns are being used nationwide, he said.
There have been a total of 1,633 road accidents over the three days with drink-driving responsible for 40.9% and speeding blamed for 27.2% of the incidents.
Most of these accidents (74.7%) involved motorcycles and 11.6% involved pickup trucks.
A total of 3,323 drink-driving cases have been sent to court and 33 offenders had their licences suspended for six months. They were also ordered to wear an electronic monitoring device and not to leave their homes from 10pm and 4am for 15 days, said Prasarn Mahaleetrakul, director-general of the Probation Department.
Bangkok recorded the highest number of drink-driving cases of 136, followed by Sakon Nakhon with 124 cases and Maha Sarakham with 93 cases, he said.
Peraphon Thawornsupacharoen, director-general of the Department of Land Transport, said most of the 792 complaints lodged with the department's passenger protection centre over the period related to reckless driving.
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