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Driving in Thailand -- A concise guide.

Driving in Thailand -- A concise guide.

Note: Driving is on the left hand side so keep this in mind when
visualizing the examples given.

Positioning yourself on the road
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Basically, any surface that's flat, wide and firm enough to support the weight of your car is appropriate to drive on. Lines on the road seem to be mostly there for decorative purposes and/or are part of a deal between local politicians and the paint company. The center line dividing the road in half is the exception, though probably not in the way you think. I've dedicated a separate paragraph to the center line further down on this page.

As a rule of thumb, on a clear road your optimum position on the road is at 66.67% from the left of your half of the road. (Extreme left is 0%, the center line is 100%) In the West you would drive at 50%, in the middle of your lane, or at 25% in the middle of the left lane on a 4 lane highway. In Thailand, on a clear road, you stick to 66.67% of your half of the road, no matter how many lanes or lines someone painted on it. This gives you good clearance from dogs, kids and farm vehicles on the left, while you keep some space on the right just in case an oncoming car starts an overtaking move right in front of you, U-turns into your lane, or some guy jumps out of the shrubs in the middle of a divided highway. You can vary by plus or minus 15% depending on the penetrability of the partition in the middle. If it's concrete and there's not a U-turn in sight, you could move over a bit to the right. A ditch or shrubs are penetrable so it's best to remain cautious. Just a center line might as well not be there in terms of penetrability.

In cities, avoid the left hand lane altogether; it is generally for parking, loading, pedestrians avoiding street vendors, and overflow street vendors themselves as the sidewalks are for motorcycles and early bird street vendors.

At traffic lights and stop signs, leave extra space between your vehicle and the vehicle in front of you - motorcycles need space to get through without scratching your paint job. I've taken the liberty to group general tips pertaining to motorcycles together with those for 'Cattle and other large animals' below as they're remarkably similar from a driver's point of view.

The center line
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The center line on undivided roads should not be seen as a separator as much as an indicator. It is in fact the most important indicator you have and needs constant monitoring in corners when there is oncoming traffic. Oncoming vehicles have the tendency to cut into your lane when you're in a left turning bend, and also near the start of a right turning bend. So watch the center line to see if and by how much you will have to move out of the way. Once you get good at this you may find the time to put the things you will learn in the 'signaling' section into practice to politely indicate you want him to bugger off to his own side of the road.

Advanced Positioning
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When there are obstacles or other traffic, you'll find you're doing constant territorial threat-analysis to calculate your 'unthreatened space'. For example, a car pulling over on the side of the road decreases this space not only by the width of the car, but also by the 'potentially threatened space' needed in case the driver suddenly opens his door without looking for traffic behind him. On the other side of the road there will be oncoming traffic. The potential threat there comes from cars that may suddenly start an overtaking move. You're optimal position is a combination of 3 factors: the area of potentially threatened space, the chance of that space becoming unavailable and the severity of the threat. For example, there is a very low chance an oncoming truck will not have seen you and overtake a slower vehicle right in front of you, however crashing into it is pretty damned severe. On the other side of the road, the pulled over car is much more likely to suddenly open his door, however damage would be relatively minor by comparison. You have to weigh this triad of factors and come up with an optimum spot, then position yourself in the center of it.

Signaling and lights
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God gave cars horns for a reason. When in doubt, use yours. Remember the example above about the car on the left who may open his door? Excellent opportunity to use the horn: Two short bursts when in doubt about another driver's intentions is the polite way to go.
If the guy tries to open his door anyway, a prolonged howl of your horn tells him what an moron he really is. When driving, it’s best to keep at least a finger on or within easy reach of the horn at all times. Professional drivers, such as those of minivans driving long distances, add multiple extra heavy duty truck horns on their relatively small sized vehicles to appear bigger and claim the space in front of them, much like a howler monkey (genus alouatta) would to claim his territory.

Also use the horn when passing Buddhist- or spirit-shrines on the side of the road. Alternatively you could raise your hand and fold your palms into a wai, but this would require taking your hands of the steering wheel which is not advisable. So use the horn instead; Buddha understands and spirits love it.

Your indicators can be used at any time, such as to signal to a faster car behind you that he can safely overtake (one blink to the left), or that that there is oncoming traffic (one blink to the right). After the car has overtaken you, he may signal a quick left-right blink to thank you. You can also use the quick left-right blink when you're driving at maximum speed, and you approach a slow moving vehicle driving in the middle of the road. In that case you could do a quick left-right signal to indicate you're going to overtake, you just haven't decided yet on which side you're gonna do it. At the latest possible time you will calculate your chances and dive either way. You can also use your indicators to go straight at an intersection (all 4, the emergency button), or you can signal left-right to the beat of the song you're listening to on the car stereo.

It's polite to turn off your high beam lights when there is oncoming traffic. Many older cars will have lights shining in all directions except on the road in front of them, you may be blinded even though they've turned off their high beams. Live with it.

You should turn on your lights during rain and at dusk. As you will be the only one doing this, other cars will signal to you to warn you as this seems to be perceived as a highly dangerous condition. On the other hand, if you forget to turn on your (main) lights in total darkness, everybody will just assume they're broken and nobody will try to let you know.

Turning right
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Assuming your indicators are broken and you still feel like signaling that you're going to slow down and make a right turn, you open the window and pretend you're an albatross taking off. Actually the window will probably be open already because the air-conditioning will likely be broken as well. Fanatically wave your arm up and down until you're sure the driver behind you has woken up.

Making sure traffic behind you is aware of your intended turn is especially important when driving on a highway and having to slow down to turn right into a smaller road. Keep looking in your mirrors. If you're not completely sure the guy behind you has seen you, do NOT slow down and make the turn! (Turn left somewhere down the road, then drive back). This because the worst case scenario in this case is pretty darn worse. (Something heavy slamming in the rear causing you to crash head on into the oncoming traffic).

There is a popular alternative to deal with the problem of traffic behind you when having to make a right turn, which is to just move over on to the lane for oncoming traffic, or even the far right side of the road, well before the turn-off. It's not very safe however because there may be a car coming out of the road you're trying to turn in to; if the driver of that car is inexperienced, he may not expect a vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road.

Turning left
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Turning left is of course easier than turning right as you don’t have to cross the lane for traffic going the other way. This is why at most traffic light intersections, it’s allowed to turn left even though the light is red. Usually there will be a sign in Thai language saying you’re allowed to turn left. There is no standard for these signs though, so if you want to play it safe then you wait for the light to turn green, or for the car behind you to signal to you to get on with it.

Right of way
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Can be best summed up in terms of physics: E = 1/2mv^2 The vehicle with the highest kinetic energy has the right of way.

Perceived condition of the brakes of the approaching vehicle is a factor however. If it's an old truck which looks like it may have 25% of it's full braking power left, then there is an inversely proportional increase in his right of way. So the final formula becomes: 1/2 * m * v^2 / 0.25

Officially, driving on a main road you have the right of way over traffic coming from smaller roads/lanes crossing it. However, if there's a queue of cars from a smaller road waiting to cross / turn on to the main road, they consider themselves part of the same convoy of cars, so when one crosses the road, all the other ones seem to be entitled to follow and traffic on the main road will just have to stop and wait.

Traffic light intersections are interesting as well; in those Western countries where traffic drives on the left, cars that turn right at a traffic light intersection would have to wait for oncoming traffic going straight. Not so in Thailand however; cars turning right will make a dash for it as soon as the light turns green. Whoever makes it to the middle of the intersection first gets to go first.

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