Speed management strategies and drivers' attitudes in Thailand

In Thailand where speeding on highways and roads has been a key contributing factor in road traffic crashes, considerable efforts to control vehicle speeds have been made, mostly through speed limit enforcement. However, the fact that speed limits are very often violated on a large scale in Thailand suggests the need for implementing more effective speed management strategies such as automatic speed cameras, increasing speeding penalty, and smart vehicle design to control vehicle speeds. While the effectiveness of such measures depends mainly on how well they could lead drivers to change speeding behavior, public acceptability is also vital as a key to sustainability of most speed management programs. This paper attempts to identify public acceptability of speed management measures, both currently implemented and under consideration, in Thailand. In doing so, data from the questionnaire surveys based on a random sample of 2180 drivers in Thailand including a wide range of individual characteristics of respondents and their attitudes to select speed management schemes are analyzed using an econometric technique. In particular, we introduce a simplified methodological framework to develop a better understanding of factors that explain drivers' attitudes towards speeding behavior and alternative speed management strategies. Findings from this research provide several important implications that could improve the current practices of speed management in Thailand.