The dead woman has been identified. She was Chanupan Saweangwit, 26, say Chalong police. Khun Chanupan, who worked as an accountant in Phuket City, was visiting her mother in Chalong.


PHUKET: A woman in black who plunged off a Phuket road to her death in a watery ditch early today was carrying nothing that identified her, police said.

Officers in the southern Phuket district of Chalong were called about 7am when locals found the woman in the ditch alongside a motorcycle.

She lost control of the motorcycle in taking a curve in Chaofa Road East, near Wat Ladthiwanaram (Wat Tai), said Captain Teanchai Ponssuwan, of Chalong Police Station.

A large crowd gathered on both sides of the ditch. It took Phuket Ruamjai Rescue Foundation paramedics about 30 minutes to retrieve the body of the woman, reckoned to be aged about 35.

She was dressed in a black top and black shorts. Her body was taken to Vachira Phuket Hospital in Phuket City.

Police will seek to trace the registration of the motorcycle in the ditch in an effort to identify the woman.

A campaign is underway to reduce the annual Phuket road toll of fatalities from 116 last year to just 50 by 2015.

Although Phuket's roads are being improved, the better surfaces often lead to greater speed. Curves and bends remain dangerous.

Crash blackspots are being gradually obliterated.

Phuket's Public Health Office, which for years released to Phuketwan monthly updates on Phuket's road toll and drownings, enabling readers to track improvements, has stopped issuing regular updates.

Some time ago, when the last monthly figures were released, seven deaths on Phuket roads in April took the toll for the first third of the year to 36.

This compares with 15 Phuket road deaths recorded in April last year and a total of 45 deaths to the same point in 2011.

In 2010, total deaths to the same point on Phuket amounted to 49. In 2009, the tally was 55.

A series of multiple crashes in Phang Nga involving the deaths of tourists early in 2012 probably added to the impression that Phuket's toll had been rising.

Phuket Public Health has also stopped releasing drowning figures for Phuket.

As at April, The drowning toll on Phuket for the first third of the year remained on five deaths. This compared with 14 to the same point in 2011, 12 in 2010, and 21 in 2009.

However, eight tourists drowned on Phuket's popular west coast beaches between mid-May and July as monsoon season made conditions unsafe.