Today’s Cambodia Daily:
In an article titled “New Traffic Law Fails to Reduce Road Fatalities”:
“Traffic deaths have not decreased in the nearly one year since the law took effect, and traffic police admit that they haven’t been able to fully implement such provisions as making motorists wear safety helmets and stopping drivers from drinking […] Tin Prasoer [Phnom Penh municipal traffic police chief] added that officers will not be taking any steps to increase enforcement of the traffic law prior to next month’s election. ‘It’s close to the election. We don’t want any reactions…If we stop motorbikes, there will be reactions from road users,’ he said.”
Read: the government makes all efforts to carry out road improvements, like paving, that they’ve otherwise put off since the last elections and relaxes fines against people in the run-up to the election in an effort to get people to go to the polls with a good impression of the ruling party, irrelevant of the safety consequences of those decisions.
In other great quotes from the same article, the traffic official also explained that the traffic police try to get riders to wear helmets but that “they say they are too tired to wear helmets.” What?
And finally, in response to why the police have been unsuccessful in curbing the high prevalence of drunk driving, Siem Reap traffic police chief Thong Sokun said, “If we implement it [the drunk driving laws], our people will have difficulty […] It is their custom.” It is a logical point. It would be harder to get from the karaoke joint home if you couldn’t drive after getting trashed, and can you imagine if one person had to remain sober for the whole night? It really would make fun “difficult” to come by.
Another day in the life