Motorbike rear lights
Vocational College students replace a rear light.
ANYONE WHO HAS DRIVEN on a dark Phuket road at night will know the heart-stopping experience of having a motorcycle with no rear light suddenly appear right in front. Rear-light bulbs cost just 20 baht, yet a straw poll suggests that as many as one in four of all motorbikes on Phuket don’t have a working rear light.
We are convinced that this is not due to tight-fistedness (“Twenty baht? Not worth it.)” or willful stupidity (“The people behind me have to look out for me, so I don’t need a light”). The fact is, very few people check their rear light before driving off on their motorbike – it’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind”.
The rear light poster produced by the PCF to educate bike riders (it was translated into Thai for the project).
The PCF has drawn a variety of people and organisations together to address this problem by replacing defective bulbs and at the same time trying to get the safety message across.
Motorcycle dealers donated bulbs, the Kusondharm Foundation lend us a tent and chairs are borrowed from a nearby wat. Students from the Vocational College give up a couple of days of their free time to change bulbs. The PCF designed and made posters, which bike owners can read while their bulbs are changed, explaining why a rear light can save the rider’s life.
The total cost to the PCF of the first session, during which we made 150 motorbikes safer, was about 7,000 baht. Because we already had the posters, the second session cost almost nothing, yet made more than 100 riders safer in the dark. We plan to hold another very soon.
