[sustran] cars in Viet Nam (fwd)

[Eric Bruun]

Subject: VI:Traffic casualties in VN rise 300% each year 
From: Vietnam Insight - vinsight at netcom.com 

Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 16:08:41 -0700 
The Vietnam Business Journal
August 1997

A Lesson in Driving 

Like most cities, Hanoi has its tourist attractions, but to locate the 
pulse of the people and indeed the culture, one need only walk its 
streets. 
BY JOSHUA JAKE LEVINE 
Any of the meandering alleys or tree-lined avenues will be choked with 
vendors selling prickly, blood-red dragonfruit, pulpy mangoes or 
flopping, live fish from twin baskets. Flowers are sold from bicycles. 
Another sight is the cyclo driver pedaling a load of 20-foot copper 
pipes. At 3 p.m. chattering schoolgirls wash into the streets, five 
across on bicycles. In the early evening, after the rain, good-looking 
teenagers court continuously from their motorbikes, as they lap around 
Ho Chi Minh Park or Lenin Park. 
Unfortunately, this placid imagery is also the scenery of death. 

"The damage caused by traffic accidents stands just behind that caused 
by the war," said Colonel Tran Dao, traffic director for the Hanoi 
Police Department, at a recent seminar on the dramatic rise in traffic 
fatalities. According to Dao, in the last seven years moving traffic in 
Vietnam has accounted for 30,000 deaths and 94,000 injuries. In the 
first five months of this year alone, 2,463 people were killed and 9,182 
injured. Each year the number of casualties increases by about 300%. 

Yet presently Hanoi's density of vehicles is among the lowest in the 
world, as is the country's in general. These days are probably the 
twilight of a time virtually without traffic jams, where one could 
imagine that if most people drove according to basic principles, the 
feeling of this city of three million could be that of a village. 

Instead, as the colonel implied, it often resembles a war zone. 
Motorbikes share the roads with seven other common types of road 
traffic, including oxen and pedestrians, who cannot be accommodated by 
narrow sidewalks separated from the streets by a system of open sewers. 
But the problem becomes crystal clear to any driver at one definitive 
moment: the intersection. 

When the subject of traffic arises in a room of non-Vietnamese living in 
Hanoi, as it inevitably does, there are otherwise intelligent 
participants who offer, "The Vietnamese have an innate sense of traffic. 
They don't actually turn their head to look both ways, but the flow, if 
you watch carefully, is not unlike a graceful dance." 

This reporter watched carefully the intersection of Hang Gai and Hang 
Hom, located in the city's old quarter, as bicycles and motorbikes 
continually collided with each other before continuing. 

It wasn't dancing. 

A complete lack of yield signs or lights, in combination with behavior 
that is contrary to traffic order, helps explain those sad statistics. 
Driving habits that are consistent, include making a left-hand turn from 
the right side of the lane, weaving, speeding, using high beams in heavy 
traffic, entering traffic without looking first, passing on the left and 
driving on the wrong side of the road. 

Recounted a Hanoi-based lawyer who drives a car, "Three other cars and 
mine arrived at a roundabout [cement traffic circle] at the same time 
and blocked each other. For ten minutes, nobody moved. I sat and read 
the paper." 

Dao reports that of 60,000 road accidents, 85% were caused by "people's 
subjective sensibility," including 32% by speeding, 29% by improper 
turning and passing, and 11.3% by drunk drivers. Dao observes that "a 
lack of traffic discipline and the law-breaking in society increases day 
by day." 

The Law on Traffic Order passed by the Prime Minister in 1995 was meant 
to provide a solution, but one problem could be that few people seem to 
know its content, as the box on page 28 illustrates. Possible exceptions 
are those in the country who voluntarily purchased it from a government 
bookstore for $1.50 (1996 per capita yearly income: $300). Driving 
classes and comprehensive driving exams have yet to be introduced. 
Nonetheless, there are over 500,000 motorbikes and 60,000 cars on 
Hanoi's roads, and more than double that in Ho Chi Minh City. 

Dao suggests that the mass media should take over and traffic law should 
become a subject in high schools, as is common in other countries. He 
noted that people should wear helmets, as most traffic fatalities are 
caused by "death from a broken skull." Dao also recommended that cement 
road curbs should be replaced with curbs coated with a soft material. 
But only by strict development and enforcement of traffic rules, he 
concluded, can the roadways become safer. 

Of course, terrible driving does not alone explain the perils of the 
road. 

The country's old, narrow streets were not designed for today's 
population, and sometimes other infrastructure failings pop up. In June 
drivers in Hanoi's Dong Da district were met with an oncoming manhole 
cover, which capped a column of mud and smoke expelled by a sewer main 
break. 

Offers of help have come from several foreign corners. In preparation for 
the November "Francophone Summit," the French government funded a French 
firm's installation of 35 traffic lights and a traffic command center for 
the local police in Hanoi. The World Bank also proposed a $10 million 
traffic improvement project that would reorder traffic in Hanoi and HCMC. 
Although approved by the Ministry of Transportation a year ago, it has 
since been sent to the Prime Minister's Office, where it awaits his final 
approval. In the meantime, the picture gets worse. 

So what kind of person owns a car in Vietnam? There are several 
immediate qualifications. First, you must have a chauffeur, preferably 
one who can handle the traffic and, of course, stand beside the car 
while you attend to your appointments. And while you sleep, unless your 
villa or apartment building happens to include a driveway. According to 
the Hanoi Peoples' Committee, the parking system today meets 0.12% of 
the city's demand, at 52,000 square meters. By 2000, they estimate, the 
city will require 1.5 million square meters of parking space. 

Edgar Chiongbian, director of BMW's operations in Vietnam, theorizes that 
this matter should be taken up by Vietnamese architects and urban 
planners. "Leave room for a car park!" he said. "At least in the 
neighborhood! Overnight, you'd have a scenario where you could park your 
car and go home." Almost no Vietnamese houses have garages. 

Some automakers suggest that more cars means fewer accidents. Cars, the 
argument goes, displace other more dangerous forms of transportation 
like bicycles and motorcycles. And you don't need a helmet to keep your 
skull intact. Yet a spin on city streets challenges those arguments, at 
least for the short term. 

One executive, in Vietnam to market one of the world's most 
well-engineered luxury automobiles, owns one himself but doesn't dare 
drive it on the streets of Hanoi. "Can't do anything with it here," he 
laments.