Bangkok Taxi Accident

[TrongpaiExpat]

Late last night I was coming home in a taxi. There was very little traffic and my driver was quite good for a change. Then, smash bang and screech, he got hit square on the right drivers side by another taxi. I was lucky to be setting in the back on the left. I did not get a scratch. My driver was injured but manged to crawl out of the mangled car. He kept trying to tell me something, finally I figured out, he was telling me to shut off the meter. The other driver was on his cell phone. The occupants of the other taxi got out and jumped out in to another taxi. My driver laying on the road, told me to do the same. I put the fare in his shirt pocket. I did not feel it right to just leave him but both drivers now seem very anxious that I leave. My driver was now getting up on his feet. The other driver stopped a taxi for me and opened the door and he almost shoved me in the taxi.

I latter though that maybe it's better for them not to have had a farang passenger or any passenger for that mater if involved in an accident. Anyone been a passenger in a taxi involved in an accident?

Divers to the right of us, divers to the left of us

[Lunchtime O'Booze]

someone has helpfully provided a myriad of sites to find a second hand car to replace your chap's taxi cab and will re-finance it for you but..next time..get a driver and not a diver and you may not crash !!

seriously though, I think he wanted you to lie down in the road with him and feign injury for a better potential insurance payout and perhaps even death ??
who knows but I wonder if that old rule of it was all your fault would apply because if you hadn't actually been in Thailand it would never have happened applies..funny old place, is'n it ? :cyclops: :cyclops:

[TrongpaiExpat]

It's a Thai keyboard and can't learly pronounce the "r's" well.

Many years ago -- it was before my first visit, so over 15 years ago -- an old Bangkok veteran (farang) told me that if I were in a taxi accident, to get out and run. His reason was that in Thailand when you "rent" a taxi, you assume responsibility for the driver as if he were a company employee working for you. I have NO idea if that were true then, or is true now. Maybe it's a variation of the old "Since you foreigner, accident your fault. If you in home country no have accident here"?

The closest I came to finding out was one time sitting in Sukhumvit traffic jam about two blocks from my destination I decided to pay the driver, get out and walk the rest of the distance. We were in the curb lane, and when I opened the car door, WHAM! a motorcycle with two Thais on board hit the door and fell over. The female motosai passenger saw the farang passenger (me) and immediately went into high drama. I knew I was doomed. After the taxi driver talked to the moto-sai driver, he said I could go. Apparently, the moto-sai owner had no license, so at his request, police would not be called. Whew!