The first thing I noticed when I got into the taxi after a long summer away from Vietnam was that the taxi driver was talking on the phone. Not only that, he kept looking at his phone because his friend seemed to keep hanging up. I looked out the windows and saw that we were passing every vehicle on the street. I looked at the speedometer and it read 120kph. That is pretty fast. But we knew there was nothing we could do about it. What were we going to say, "please slow down"? They don’t know English. In Vietnam, however, this is normal. Traffic accident injuries are the leading cause of death and severe injury of foreigners in Vietnam.
I have been living in Hanoi, Vietnam for a year and a half and I still have one more year to go. So far it has been an amazing experience which has been hindered by the issue of road traffic safety. Vietnam has one of the highest death tolls in the world due to road traffic accidents, weighing in at 35 to 40 per day, or around 13,000 per year! This does not include the many, many more who are injured every day. Three of the most dangerous roads in Vietnam account for about 50% of all fatalities involving road accidents. It was not always like this. Before about 10 years, Vietnam was mostly bicycles and very little motorbikes and other vehicles. However, Vietnam's economy is one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. Now the number of registered motorbikes is much, much higher than it was before. As well as the motorbikes, there are many cars and taxis, trucks, busses, etc. When there were few vehicles on the road, the fact that the Vietnamese were very aggressive when it came to driving didn’t matter. However, now they are all competing for space in order to be able to get to where they want to go as quickly as possible. They don’t pay attention to traffic lights, there are no stop signs, they swerve. This is only to name a few things. Drunk driving is a huge problem as well because alcohol is part of their culture.
Human error is not the only thing contributing to the high number of deaths and injuries on the road. The road infrastructure has been overwhelmed by the growing number of vehicles, resulting in potholes, floods, and fallen bridges. Many times animals are seen crossing busy roads, and they can come out of nowhere. Helmets have been a big issue here as well, or should I say, lack of helmets. Their cultural beliefs come into play when they don’t put helmets on their children due to the fact that they think it will mess with the development of their child's brain.
(Hey, that's normal, right?)
Because I ride my bike to school, I am just part of all of this wild traffic. I feel like I'm in a video game, where the aim is to avoid all of the motorbikes, cars, potholes, and chickens running across the street. The difference is that it is real life. If I'm hit by a motorbike, I wont disintegrate and reappear where I began. That is why I feel it's so important for people to be aware of the hazards on the streets of Vietnam. But then again, the road scenes are one of the many things that make Hanoi so charming.
