A horrible accident and reparation

I was with a group of people standing in the road chatting outside our house. It was Temple Day and Waree wanted to go to the Temple Market so I was sitting on our motorcy waiting for her to stop gassing. It was about 8.30 am and cool, children were walking and riding bicycles to school. Our street is concreted and the road is wide enough for 2 cars to pass but there are always many pedestrians, children, vendors etc so most people go very slowly.

We were occupying about half the road. Suddenly a motorbike with three teenagers on rushing to school went past at high speed. At the same time the little two year old boy who lives in the house opposite toddled out to his grandmother who was standing in our group. The motorbike ran straight into him and dragged him underneath about five meters down the road, running over him in the process. The bike carried on down the road and stopped about 100 meters away.

Waree’s brother Tau with great presence of mind started his motorbike and carried the boy’s grandmother and the boy off to the village nursing post.

The young men who had caused the accident just drove off to school. I was incensed that nobody even tried to stop them and they had not even returned to see how the boy was. The next hour was taken up with many people jabbering away in Thai (Lao) and me trying to convince them that they should pressure the appropriate Head Man to put in speed humps. This is another story but suffice to say that of course I didn’t succeed.

Eventually the boy returned from the Nursing Post and with a whole crowd of people set of in a truck for the nearest hospital in Phom Pisai. There are no police in the village with the nearest police post some 15 kms away. In any case nobody was interested in involving the police. I couldn’t understand how they could let the young men ride away from the scene with no punishment of any sort.

There is a continual problem with teenager boys riding motorbikes too fast and they kill themselves regularly usually because they are drunk on Thai whisky. I think that part of the problem is that this is a “kindergarten village”. Most of the children’s parents are working overseas as maids or labourers, or in factories in Bangkok or in Phuket as bargirls. They send back good money but all their children are brought up by the grandparents. So there is a lack of parental supervision which is not a problem so much in the girls who are brought up to be responsible and care for younger children, but is a real problem with rebellious adolescent boys.

After a couple of days the boy returned from hospital where he had been under observation and amazingly he was unharmed. That seemed to be an end to it, but a few days later in the evening about 20 people were assembled in the front of the house opposite.

Houses are not separate from the road to the same extent as they are in Western countries so typically in a gathering like this some people are in the house, some in the sitting platforms in front of the house and some in the road.

Waree tells me that they have come to work out compensation for the boy who was run over. The grandmother approaches Waree and they talk in low voices. Apparently the family of the injured boy want 7,000 baht (about $210) compensation and the young man’s mother has offered 1,000 baht (about $30). The grandmother is asking for advice as to how to negotiate a higher price.

As a farang I am well acquainted with the arguments used by people suing for millions of dollars in compensation claims, so I make some valuable suggestions such as on going mental trauma, loss of earnings etc. Naturally these are dismissed out of hand as the usual ravings of the imbecile farang.

The longer I stay here the more I realize that everybody here is related in some way, so these negotiations are really in the extended family. I drink some beer with the men and everybody is very jovial and there is the usual continual badinage and joking.

The sister of the mother of the young man who was riding the bike is doing most of the negotiating sitting on a rush mat near the centre of the group. I can tell from her body language that she is not so happy. The young man’s mother, who has come from Bangkok, where she works, sits behind her along with his grandmother.

The young men involved are squatting outside in the road with their motorcycles watching the proceedings. Suddenly the young man’s aunt gets up and shouts at him in strident Lao. Waree translates for me “You no study or get any money”. She is very angry it has cost her sister 5,000 baht (about $150) in compensation. A paltry amount to a farang but a lot in a country where a person only earns 100 baht ($3) for a day’s work in the rice fields.

The young man’s family depart and the young man races off angrily at high speed on his bike. Obviously he has not yet learned a lesson. The rest of us stay behind and drink beer. The episode has been concluded satisfactorily, but there will be no speed humps and it will happen again.