I noticed something recently that has made me become super cautious while driving Chiang Mai’s roads – we have people using the zebra crossings again!
Over the past three quiet years I noticed myself – and to be fair just about ever other driver – completely ignoring the zebra crossings on Chiang Mai’s city roads. After all it was just we residents occasionally strolling the streets during the pandemic doldrums, and we know better than to trust a car to stop.
So that meant that for the past three years cars simply didn’t stop very often for pedestrians, who enjoyed jaywalking our then-traffic free roads.
Now with the mass influx of tourists, I am finding myself braking at the last minute as a group of bold but foolhardy tourists confidently stride out in front of traffic, quite rightly expecting us to stop for them. Often the cars in the lane next to me will go zooming straight ahead, causing me and the unsuspecting tourists to have a mini cardiac arrest. International traffic rules need to be respected if we are to become an international city welcoming people from all over the world.
What we need – hello Mayor Assanee Buranupakorn – is, for starters, to repaint and highlight all the zebra crossings, as most have faded so much they are hardly discernible by day, let alone visible by night.
In the meanwhile, let’s be super cautious when we drive our streets. Tourists are returning and we don’t want to be running them over.
Just a short little public service announcement!
