BANGKOK: Bangkok’s legendary traffic jams may be getting a bit lighter. Or at least less of a joke.
A handbook distributed to police and other authorities yesterday updates the guidelines for motorcades and other public appearances by Thailand’s royal family. It overturns practices that quietly irritated the public in a country where open criticism of the royal family is illegal, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The palace hopes the changes will end a long-running joke about notorious traffic congestion in the capital of more than 12 million people.
“Every time there’s a traffic jam, everyone wonders if there’s a royal motorcade passing by,” palace official Chantanee Thanarak told a police training session at national police headquarters in Bangkok. “The royal family never meant to bother the public.”
About a dozen members of Thailand’s extended royal family travel by motorcade, including 84-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the queen, their children and grandchildren. The palace said Bhumibol initiated the changes himself, though he has rarely traveled outside the hospital where he has stayed more than two years.
n FROM: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thailand’s king updates motorcade rules to ease traffic congestion
