Riding a Scooter in Flip-Flops: Why It Goes Wrong

Almost every visitor to Thailand rides a scooter in flip-flops at some point, usually within an hour of collecting it, usually to the beach. Nobody will stop you — this is not a legal question, and we have found no footwear requirement in Thai traffic law. It is a physical one, and the physics are not on your side: a flip-flop provides no grip on a wet footboard, comes off at the first sign of trouble, and leaves the top of your foot and your ankle bare against tarmac that is moving at 40 km/h.

The result is the most common injury pattern seen at walk-in clinics in Thai beach towns: the top of the foot and the ankle stripped raw, toes broken or degloved, and a burn from the exhaust on the inside of the calf. It heals slowly in this climate, it hurts for the rest of the holiday, and it is entirely prevented by a pair of trainers.

• What flip-flops protectThe sole of your foot, from hot sand
• What they do in a fallCome off immediately
• Most common resulting injuryDegloved toes and ankle road rash
• The fixClosed shoes — trainers are enough

What actually happens

They come off before the crash, not during it

This is the part riders do not anticipate. A flip-flop is held on by a thong between two toes and nothing else. Put a foot down quickly at a junction, catch the sole on the tarmac while moving, or snag it on the footboard edge, and the shoe is gone — sometimes taking your attention with it. Riders who have never crashed in Thailand have very often lost a flip-flop at 30 km/h and spent the next fifty metres trying to sort it out.

The dangerous version of that is the emergency foot-down. You put a foot out to stop the bike toppling, the flip-flop slides on gravel or wet tarmac instead of gripping, and the bike goes over anyway — usually onto your leg.

Foot under the bike

In a low-speed drop, the scooter lands on the rider's lower leg and ankle. A shoe with a stiff sole and an upper spreads that load; a flip-flop puts a rubber sheet under your sole and nothing anywhere else. Ankle and metatarsal fractures from a stationary or nearly stationary scooter falling over are routine, and they are the injuries that end a holiday rather than interrupting it, because you cannot walk on them and you cannot ride.

The toes go first

If your foot slides along the road with an exposed edge — and in a flip-flop the toes are the leading edge — the tarmac takes the skin off in the direction of travel. Degloving injuries to the toes and the top of the foot are the classic scooter-in-sandals result. They are painful, slow, prone to infection in the tropics, and often need a dressings clinic every day or two for a fortnight. Road rash and exhaust burns explains why tropical wounds behave differently from the same graze at home.

The exhaust

Separate from the crash risk, and far more likely to happen. A scooter's exhaust runs along the right-hand side at calf and ankle height and reaches a temperature that will burn through skin in about a second. In flip-flops there is nothing between it and the inside of your ankle. Almost everyone who rides here for a fortnight has touched one at least once, usually while getting off, and the mark is common enough that visitors call it the Thai tattoo.

Where it goes wrong most

The situations are predictable, and they are the ordinary bits of a day rather than the exciting bits.

• Wet footboard. After rain — or after a wet swimming costume — a rubber flip-flop on a wet plastic footboard has close to no friction. Your foot slides off under braking.
• Sandy road surfaces. The commonest way a visitor comes off is a patch of sand on a coastal bend. When it happens, the reflex is a foot down, and a flip-flop on sand does nothing. See sand and gravel on Thailand's coastal roads.
• Car parks and hotel forecourts. The low-speed manoeuvring where the bike is heaviest and slowest is where it goes over onto a foot.
• Getting on and off. The exhaust burn happens here, not while riding.
• Two-up. The bike is heavier and harder to hold at a stop, and there are now two pairs of feet. Carrying a passenger on a scooter covers the rest of what changes.
• Beach roads at the end of the day. Wet feet, sand on the footboard, tired, going a hundred metres. This is the trip nobody puts shoes on for.

What to wear instead, in 34 degrees

Nobody is suggesting motocross boots. The realistic bar is low and clears almost all of the risk.

Heat is the objection, and it is a fair one, but a shoe is only marginally hotter than a sandal on a moving bike, because the airflow is the same. The discomfort is when you get off and walk around, which is why the practical answer for most people is to ride in trainers and carry the flip-flops in the seat compartment. Nearly every scooter in Thailand has a helmet-sized box under the saddle, and a pair of flip-flops takes up almost none of it.

The rest of the outfit follows the same logic

Feet are the first thing to fix because the cost-benefit is so lopsided, but they are not the only exposed part. In a low-speed spill the order of contact is usually foot, ankle, knee, hip, hand, elbow — and hands are the reflex, which is why gloves and footwear for riding in Thailand treats them together. A pair of light mesh gloves and closed shoes covers the two areas that take the first hit, weighs nothing, and costs less than a day's scooter hire.

Beyond that it becomes a judgement about heat, and protective riding clothing in a hot climate works through what is genuinely worth wearing at 35 degrees and what is theatre.

The money side

A foot injury from a scooter drop is a medical bill: a dressings clinic in a tourist town is cheap, but an X-ray, a plaster or a follow-up at a private hospital is not — Thai hospitals after a crash and what it costs covers what a foreign patient pays. And the same drop has scratched the bike, which the rental shop will want paying for; what happens if you drop a rented scooter covers that conversation.

Frequently asked questions