Politics is a mess, the baht is rising too fast, too furiously, and the South is literally a war zone. To make matters worse, road accidents and criminal offences are becoming more insane, as if Thailand is ruled by lawlessness.

You take a coach and it might just burst into flames; you walk down the street and suddenly you might be caught up in a school gang fight; and if you get into a verbal fight with someone, your arm might be cut off.

The point is that people living in Thailand in general, let alone the southernmost provinces, are taking unwarranted risks every time they step out of the house. Life is getting cheaper by the day.

The call for public safety will be sounded whenever a fatal accident takes place, but in the end it will not materialise into anything substantial. The coach accident in Saraburi that killed 29 passengers this past week was not the first of its kind and it will definitely not be the last.

The high death toll shocked the nation, but actually similar unnecessary deaths occur every now and then within Thailand's transportation system. Passengers are not safe on buses, boats, trains or taxis.

And it's the same story every time. Carelessness on the part of the driver, or the operating company as a whole is to blame, and officials announce that stricter precautions and harsher punishments will be put in place.

However, time has proven that there are no prevention and punishment mechanisms in place at all. The Saraburi accident reflects how lax the laws and the enforcement of them are. There's no fear of punishment on the part of the coach operator at all as regards the way it maintains its buses. This particular one had been running for 36 years!

On an emotional note, there has not been a single word of apology from the coach company. To take a cue from previous cases, the operator will be allowed to run buses on the same routes pretty soon despite a one-week ban for now.

Even if the operator's licence is revoked, how can the authorities guarantee that a new operator will abide by the rules that are never respected nor feared in the first place?

The call for more stringent measures will fall, once again, on deaf ears. Just like the recycling of Thai lakorn (soap opera) plots, this whole vicious cycle will repeat itself when a tragic accident takes place in the future.

When will authorities get serious about setting public safety as a top priority and making these "accidents" unforgivable?

Meanwhile, leniency and nepotism prove to still be alive and well in Thai society. The fact that a girl got her right arm chopped off by a gang of three men for not playing their flirting game is just simply outrageous.

More disgusting is the fact that one of those involved is a police officer while the other two are security volunteers. The case was filed with the police station in Saraburi on February 26, but until the victim made it to National Police Office headquarters this past week, no progress had been made.

Local police officers, who worked at the same station as the accused policeman, tried to make the case seem as if it were an accident, and the victim has not yet received any compensation, even medical expenses, from the three so-called law enforcers.

In a case as appalling as this the three were granted bail and released temporarily. How can anyone expect to find peace of mind about personal security if officials are given bail so easily despite the gravity of the case and the fact that they are supposed to be the upholders of the law?

In fact, any government official, especially a member of the police force, should face tighter legal procedures and harsher punishments.

Since no real changes are in sight, the best policy is therefore to watch out for yourself. Make sure you are on alert at all time, ready to jump out the bus window, swim in the klongs or the Chao Phya River or run for your life if need be.

Actually, we're not the only ones leading risky lives - even fish are suffering with safety concerns as well.

The greatest mystery of the Ayutthaya-Angthong massacre that even Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot might not be able to crack is who killed the fish? What caused the sudden lack of oxygen in the water? Will the culprits ever be found and more importantly, punished?

Human life, fish, fish, human life. Sadly, they face more or less the same fate.

Veenarat Laohapakakul