Thailand's roads are relatively peaceful, well, if you can accept the fact that you are always in danger of dying on them. As the country that routinely ranks 1st or 2nd in road deaths in the world, this is a situation that the government tries to prevent the world from seeing when they are advertising it for tourism purposes but you only need to operate a vehicle here for a little while before you start to realize the lawlessness of the roads here.
While my home is far enough away from the sorts of areas that bored teenagers use for their nightly drag strips, I have been passed by a motorbike with an altered exhaust that was so loud that it scared the hell out of me as I puttered along on my 125 cc bike.
I have grown to loathe these people even though as a teenager I likely would have been doing something similarly annoying.
The police rarely do anything about this because of many reasons but I think the main one would be that the teenagers on the souped up bikes can easily escape the police on their standard bikes. It's pretty funny actually, when you see a policeman on a regular bike that likes of which you could purchase easily. The funniest one I have seen has Hello Kitty decals on it. It is tough to take authority seriously when this happens.
The street punks had to be caught in a sting and the only reason I believe that this happened is not because of safety, but because of the fact that the place that they were doing their late night drag strip is near a rather affluent part of Phuket. Don't ever mess with the rich people! If you do you will get busted.
The area is called Ao Yon and it is a really fancy and scenic part of Phuket island.
While I applaud the police cracking down on road safety, it is a bit annoying that the reason why they did it is because of the wealth in this area. I've been down there multiple times and looking around you can see the immense wealth that is going on here. Also, the roads are in impeccable shape whereas the rest of the island's roads are for the most part, in a terrible state. The rich get what they want!
The biked were seized and the teens were arrested
Also, and I was unaware that this existed until now, but the parents of the teens will also be charged under the Child Protection Act. The parents will be punished for the transgressions of their children since just like a lot of the world. people under a certain age cannot be punished for certain crimes.
Do you agree with this? It is difficult for me to relate because I had good parents that would never tolerate this sort of behavior on my part.
So while I am glad that we can get these noisy people off the roads, I don't agree with HOW they are going about it. These problems exist all over Thailand yet they are only cracked down on if they are performing their antics in rich neighborhoods. How is this justice?
My guess is that the residents of this neighborhood pay some sort of under-the-table money to the cops to have this enforcement take place where they live.