An American man is giving free helmets to motorcycle riders driving on unsafe roads in Thailand.

The generous expat Savvy Rick Brown, 57, donates free Space Crown helmets to passing motorists along Jomtien Beach in Pattaya hoping to improve road safety in the country, which has notoriously poor traffic safety records.

Footage shows Rick flagging down and distributing the headgear to several families blatantly violating regulations as they coasted along helmetless on their motorcycles.

Rick said the Space Crown helmets are Thai-made and of high quality. They are bought using his own money and donations given through his Go Fund Me fundraiser page.

Rick, who is retired and has been living in Thailand for almost two years, said he started the initiative around half a year ago, spurred by his own traumatic experience with a bike accident when he was younger.

He said: 'When I was here in Thailand, I saw a problem with many children without helmets.

'When I was a young boy, I had an accident. The bad kids, they sabotaged the brakes on my bicycle. So I had no brakes and I went downhill from my high school and landed on my head, and I have some problems with my neck because of this injury.

'So every time I see children without helmets, I get very sad, and I wanted to do something about it. I decided to, on my own, buy some helmets and hand them out to children.'

Rick added that he has earned praise from residents and the police for his efforts.

His goal now is to expand the initiative out of Pattaya and distribute a million helmets to kids across Thailand.

He said: 'I'm embarrassed because I don't speak fluent Thai yet. I'm learning Thai, but my goal is to be able to speak Thai, and I want to travel all over Thailand and give away helmets to every community.'

Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in Asia, Thailand suffers from chronic underinvestment in its highways and education, contributing to its poor road safety levels. Only a handful of African countries are worse.

Thailand has one of the world's worst road safety records. Ministers have set the goal of reducing fatalities from 32.7 deaths per 100,000 people to 12 per 100,000 people by the year 2027.