If you’ve read Val Thinks for a while, you’ll know that I almost exclusively write about personal and relationship matters. I don’t comment on the wider society1—not because I intentionally avoid the topic, but because I usually don’t have anything to say.
But yesterday, I experienced a Truly Appalling Event (TM), the kind that makes you want to laugh and cry and bury yourself 50 metres underground in shame. So today, I’m breaking my silence and providing a rare social commentary on none other than my home country, Thailand.
The Truly Appalling Event
As most of you already know, I’m about to head back to Thailand for an extended visit. On the agenda: spending time with my parents, meals with friends, and a boring yet necessary driver’s license renewal.
My driver’s license expired in July, and people whose license expired less than a year ago are required to attend a one-hour online training and produce the completion certificate at the renewal appointment to get a new driver’s license.
I didn’t think this was a bad idea. In fact, it’s been 12 years since I got my driver’s license, and I’d quite like a refresher: how many metres should I leave between the car in front and me, how often should I get my car checked up, what this and that street sign means—things that an occasional driver like me would find useful to be reminded of.2
The online training is split into four videos which you have to watch in full (no fast-forwarding possible), which I thought was fair. I had a Word document open, ready to take notes. Then I clicked play on the first video.
The senior Ministry of Transport employee came on-screen dressed in a sharp suit and armed with a clicker, the PowerPoint presentation clearly visible next to his talking head. As he began to speak and expertly click through the elaborately designed slides, my jaw dropped ever lower in disbelief.
Did you know that 9% of accidents are caused by the car/bad driving skills, 20% by the road/environment, and 71% by bad driving spirit? The aim of today’s training is to instill in you all fine drivers a good driving spirit. Let’s begin.
Safe driving begins with greeting. You must greet yourself, your car, and the environment before setting out on your journey. If you see a pedestrian on the side of the road who looks like they might be about to cross the street, you must greet them by honking your horn at them.
But you should never honk at old people, because they freeze.
Nor honk when cars come out of your blind spot unless the situation is truly critical.
4 things you must keep in mind when driving: 1) You can drive however you want, just don’t hit other people. 2) You can drive however you want, just don’t let others hit you. 3) You can drive however you want, just don’t cause others to have an accident. 4) You can drive however you want, just reach your destination safely.
You must be careful of children when driving. Not because they’re careless or inexperienced, but because children can only see straight. Adults have 150-degree vision, but children can, erm, only see straight.
If you see a drunken person crawling on the street, don't drive around behind them because they might get up and fall backwards.
I sat through the four videos in a state of increasing dismay verging on rage. I then answered four questions to get my completion certificate, one of which was: What field of vision do children have? (Answer: They can only see straight.)
How can we learn to think?
The training over, I turned to my partner and began spewing the highlights to him. What the fuck is this? You can’t make this shit up if you try. What did I just spend hours of my life on?
It is beyond belief to think that someone at the Ministry of Transport sat down, wrote this content, got it approved (presumably by more senior officers), then spent time and effort creating the PowerPoint and recording the training—and at no point realised this was a load of horsecrap.
The logical inconsistencies (it’s recommended to honk at pedestrians about to cross the street but not advisable to honk at cars surging out of your blind spot), the vacuous statements (drive however you wish, just don’t hit other people), assertions flying in the face of science (children can only see straight), and the sheer ridiculousness of it all (beware of drunken people doing backflips while inebriated).
It blows my mind. I don’t know if I should laugh because it’s funny, or cry because it’s depressing to think no one involved in the process had the thinking chops to realise how utterly useless and ridiculous this training—to be shown to tens of millions of Thais every five years—is.
Anger is not an emotion I feel often. But this, this shambles of a training leaves me enraged. I am fuming, have been since yesterday. How could this happen? How did no one see? How did we end up with this travesty?
What do you think?
Which leads me to today’s question for you:
How can we learn to think?
How can we as a society learn to be critical thinkers? What training can we put ourselves through? What tools can we use? What help do we need? How do we make sure we never become the person who steps in front of the camera and confidently proclaims that children can only see straight?
Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with the best thinkers you know.
Now I’m going to go cool off.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,
Val
Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash
This commentary on lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City last year was a notable exception.
Spoiler alert: None of this would be in the training.