iRAP’s coding manual – one of the core resources for its life-saving work around the world – is now available in Thai.

The new language version is part of a concerted drive by iRAP to make key publications as widely available as possibly in local language versions to ensure complete accuracy of understanding. The manual (and local variants) is already available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Portuguese. With the addition of the Thai version – and soon to be launched French and Italian versions – it will be accessible to over two billion people in their first language.

iRAP Senior Road Safety Engineer Luke Rogers said: ‘Our two local partners the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and Chulalongkorn University are working with us to assess some important roads in Bangkok, Thailand as part of the BIGRS project.

‘Thailand has a very high death rate from road crashes (36.2 per 100,000 pop.WHO est.) with 14,059 reported deaths (2012). Our partners speak and read English very well but in order to build local, in-country capacity for road assessments and road safety projects – a big part of the BIGRS initiative – it was deemed necessary to have the manual available in Thai.

‘We are keen to build the skills of the road authority and with this manual the Traffic and Transport Department (TTD) have the opportunity to learn how to record the attributes we need in order to model risk.’