All foreigners have very different perspectives about the traffic situations in Hanoi. Some choose to look at it as a joke, as a majority of the conversations we have at a dinner party is about that crazy guy on a motorbike did this and what we saw them carrying. Others look at it as an extreme hazard, never allowing their children to cross the road by themselves (which I do not blame them for). My friend, Jemimah Beardwood, has shared with me her perspective on one certain area of Hanoi:
"Having avoided the wildlife, I found myself in the middle of the round-a-bout. Not just any old round-a-bout from a cosmopolitan country with some ridiculously sensible system. No. This was motorbikes of all different colors swerving in all different directions and beeping at each-others bad driving, utter hypocrisy. “Slow and steady” I chanted like a mantra. The other side of the road was so far “I would walk 500 miles”. Whoever sung that song obviously didn’t have to cross this road on their journey. Whoever sung that song obviously didn’t have to cross this road on their journey. Closing my eyes I shuffled across listening to syllables I’m sure I will never be able to understand. “xin chào, bao nhiêu, cảm ơn bạn” all mixed into one sound. "
The round-a-bout Jemimah is talking about is the one next to Hoan Kiem Lake. I know how she feels. This round-a-bout is known as one of the busiest crossings in Hanoi. Someone was able to capture the essence of it perfectly in this video:
Every time I cross that street, I wish whoever I'm with good luck and I say "Maybe, I'll see you on the other side." It is truly a very interesting and frightening experience. But that's what makes Hanoi...well, Hanoi!
Use the tips from my previous post about how to cross a street when crossing this roundabout. If you are a newcomer to Vietnam, you may want to try practicing on smaller and less...congested streets.
Is it everyday when you have to cross a road like this?
Ok, I have onlybeen required to cross a road like this a few times. But crossing these busy streets has become part of my daily routine.
Being a pedestrian in Hanoi is definitely not easy. Anyone is vulnerable, women, men, children, etc. Pedestrian accidents are actually the only ones that have an equal amount of men and women who die. Anyone is vulnerable while being a pedestrian.
(Consulting Services for Demonstration Corridors Monitoring and Evaluation Bi-annual Report April 2011)
My first day in Hanoi, I had realized what I had gotten into. My brother and I wanted to cross a street to get to a store. I waited for the vehicles to stop for me. This street was not even very wide-- maybe 4 meters. 10 minutes later (yea, this is sort of an exaggeration), they were still going. I realized that drivers were simply not going to stop for me.
This is the normal experience that newcomers go through. Everyone has a hard time in the beginning, and it takes getting used to. For me, I was still nervous after a year each time I crossed the street. I did have a good reason though.
Here are some hints that can help you the next time you are attempting to cross a street in Vietnam that I have learned from personal experience:
Look left, then right, then left again, as Vietnam drives on the left-hand side.
Do not hesitate and wait for a pause in the traffic, unless you want to pitch a tent on the side of the road and wait. Like I said before, they will not stop for you.
Just keep walking(do NOT RUN. This doesn’t help in countries with developed street systems, and it will definitely not work here) and do not slow down or speed up, as drivers usually interpret your speed from far away to see how fast they should be going in order to not hit you… or they don’t pay attention at all and just swerve around you. Do not make eye contact with the other drivers, as they will suspect that you know they are coming and they take away your right of way (2).
When walking on the side of the road you should not change your course as well. My mom once had her foot run over by a motorbike when she was walking on the side of the road and heard a motorbike coming behind her. She got scared and jumped to the side at the same time that the driver was attempting to swerve around her. (By the way, sidewalks here are not such a huge help, as they are usually either covered with mini pho restaurants, people squatting, or, most often, these squares with trees coming out of them.)
Hold your hand out to the side to make the drivers more aware of you and so they can see they need to acknowledge that you are attempting to cross the street.
On a two way street, stop in the middle and repeat the process again.
Motorbikes almost always swerve. Cars, on the other hand, are not as likely to swerve. The giant busseswill NOT swerve. When you see a bus coming, the best idea is to wait until it passes, and make sure that no more busses are coming. The busses are also quite tall so they may not even see you. A bus running you over is way more likely to kill you than a motorbike. Recently, on November 13th, three people were killed and three more injured after two trucks collided and one of them flew across the road, and slid into two other busses, another truck, four motorbikes, and a bicycle. The average pedestrian does not have the same amount of force.
This is a picture of one of the vehicles that was hit.
As you can see in this picture, the street just looks like a swarm of little ants to a bus driver:
That old adage, "There is safety in numbers," really applies to the art of crossing the street in Vietnam. You are less likely to be mowed down when you are in a line of friends. Actually, it doesn’t even have to be friends. I usually go up to random strangers and use them as human shields.Many times old Vietnamese people grab my arm and force me across the street with them, screaming things in Vietnamese that I don’t understand. Always glad to help a fellow citizen.
And finally, my most important tip: Never stand in the middle of the road in order to take a picture of the traffic. I know from personal experiences…
Foreigners are so vulnerable to being hurt by vehicles because of one thing: predictability. In a majority of our home countries, we know that if we cross at the crosswalk, the cars that are coming will stop when they get to the crossing. Here, however, we can predict that the motorbikes will swerve around us and that we need to keep going regardless if someone is coming right at us. If a person predicts that the behaviors of the driving will be the same here than it is in their home country, that is when the accidents happen.
Using my tips, I hope you are able to keep your head up high and walk across the streets like a man… or just stay alive.
Works Cited
1.Nguyen, Trung. "Three killed as truck hits nine vehicles in southern Vietnam ."
Taxis tend to be the best way to travel around Hanoi. Firstly, they are very cheap. If I ever take a taxi to school, the 10-15 minute drive usually costs around 60,000VND (equivalent to about US$3). And this price has increased massively since I first came when it would cost 30,000VND (about US$1.50). Yet this is way less than a taxi would cost in places likeNew York City or Washington, D.C. In addition to being cheap, they are also everywhere! All you have to do is go onto a main road and lift up your hand when you see a car with a taxi sign on top. There are so many that, usually, 2 out of 3 times there will be a empty taxi stopping for you in the first two minutes of waiting. They are usually quite open to taking people around, excluding the drivers asleep in their car that shake their heads when you ask them for a ride. Finally, being in a taxi is one of the safest places you can be on the streets of Vietnam, aside from trucks and busses.
As you can see in this table, when a car is in an accident, the number of people injured or killedcompared to the number of people who are unscathed is much lower than the number of people who are killed in motorbike, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents.
(Consulting Services for Demonstration Corridors Monitoring and Evaluation Bi-annual Report April 2011)
At this point, Taxis may seem like heaven. However, there are some factors you need to consider in order to continue being safe-- and not cheated-- in a taxi. The first thing that is important to know is the "legit" taxi companies and the "cheating" taxi companies. The most reliable taxi companies are Hanoi Taxi, Mai Linh Taxi, Van Xuan Taxi, Hanoitourist Taxi, and Hanoi CP Taxi. Noi Bai and Airport Taxi is good as well, as they take you to the airport and there isusually a fixed price (2).
Some of these taxi drivers can be very tricky, especially when they are not legit taxis. One example is recently, when a taxi driver cheated two Japanese people out of more than US$360, and around the same time, two singaporeans were charged US$285 for only 10km (3).
A friend of my mom was visiting us and she had to catch a bus downtown for atrip to Sa Pa. She was running late, and the taxi driver could obviously see her rush, and he made the meter run very fast, causing her to pay about 4 times as much as what she would have to pay normally. He locked her in and said that she couldn’t go until she gave him the money. Since she was in a hurry, she had no choice but to pay.
Another way taxis attempt to get more of your loot is by taking you on a long, unwanted detour when going to your destination. Hanoi has many streets and many alleyways, and there are often multiple ways of arriving to a destination. Taxi drivers will deliberately go a way that could take 10-20 minutes longer, resulting in a farther distance and more money on the meter. If you know the city well, you can direct them yourself and not allow them to go a longer way, however sometimes they refuse, saying that there is traffic on the shorter way or that it is actually longer (1).
Another thing to consider in taxis is that a majority of them (at least the ones I've been in) either have no seatbelt or they keep the belt stuck behind the seat so that it cannot be used. Some taxi drivers act just as many of the other vehicle drivers in Vietnam act: going the wrong way, swerving, speeding, etc. Not wearing a seatbelt in these situations could bepotentially very dangerous because of this. Just the other day, the driver of the taxi I was in attempted to squeeze into a tiny space between a car and a bus as the bus was attempting to turn the other way, and it banged against the side of the taxi. The taxi driver wasn’t so much concerned about me as he ran outside to check the damage done to his car.
3."Two apprehended for allegedly cheating Japanese in Hanoi ." Thanh Nien News 05 November. 2011. . 17 December. 2011 <http://www.thanhniennews.com/2010/Pages/20111105-Two-apprehended-for-allegedly-cheating-Japanese-in-Hanoi.aspx>.
On Tuesday, I went to the Protec Helmet company store to talk to Lotte Brondum, the regional development director of Asia Injury Prevention, an NGO whose main focus is to promote raise awareness about the social, economic, and human impact of the increasing number of road accidents in developing countries. In Vietnam, their main focus is increasing the number of people who wear helmets in order to decrease the number of fatalities and serious injuries associated with road accidents. They opened their Protec helmet factories in 2002.
Previously, the only actual "protective" helmets were the big full faced ones, which were expensive, hot, and uncomfortable. Protec helmets protect only the most important parts of the head, and at the same time are not too heavy or expensive, and they can adapt to the hot climate. The big full face helmets cost $100, about 9 days of an average Vietnamese person's work, which is only about 2 hours for a foreigner. The Protec helmets are only around 270,000VND (about $13, which is much more affordable for Vietnamese people. Full face helmets usually weight about 1kg, while Protec helmets weigh about 300g. This is important because a big reason why people choose not to wear helmets is because they say it is too heavy and uncomfortable. Protec also has a variety of designs and colors. Since the creation of Protec helmets, the helmet wearing percentage increased from 3%-90%.
The Protec helmets have a dense Styrofoamlining which is why it is so protective. They also have a sticker on the back that show that it is a standard quality helmet. Every helmet is tested and certified at Protec's laboratory, and they all meet the Vietnamese, European, and Australian standards. The different tests include, crash, puncture, velocity drop, and testing of the chin straps and buckles.
("About Us")
However, many other helmet companies copy the design of the Protec helmet but without the protective lining, so they are not actually safe. They do not test their helmets. This is a problem because these helmets are not protecting people, and yet the police do nothing to enforce the standardization law.
A really great thing about the company is that many of the employees are disabled, and they give them amenities such as food, recreation and training.
("About Us")
Also, they have created helmets for children. This is important because the percentage of children who wear helmets is much lower than the percentage of adults who wear helmets. The parent's excuses consist of the following:
The helmet is too heavy for the child and will injure the spine(tests have shown this is untrue, yet in 2007, 68% percent of parents said this was the reason they didn’t make their children wear helmets, and 32% in 2011)
The skull cant grow
Parents think they are good drivers and will never have an accident so their children don’t need helmets.
They think it is a short distance or a small street so nothing bad will happen.
The helmet is too expensive and they don't want it to get stolen.
Children are the future road users, therefore it is important that they have the knowledge of how to be responsible.
Today I went for a jog around Tây Hồ (West Lake). On a normal jog , one would normally be attempting to combat the fatigue and exhaustion going through you as you run. Along with that, I have to deal with speeding motorbikes, treacherous teenagers, and impatient cars. As I have mentioned before,a majority of the sidewalks in Vietnam are covered with motorbikes, tiny restaurants and cafes, and giant pots of trees which take up the whole sidewalk, thus, forcing me to run on the street.
No matter how cute, it's still annoying.
This sign is even saying that you should park your motorbikes on the sidewalk.
Here you can see the trees whose pots take up the entire sidewalk.
Teenagers are often having races along the lake. As the lake's road is very curvy, I cannot always see what is coming around the corner, resulting in having to dodge a speeding motorbike. When you are already exhausted, this is surely not going to make your running experience any better. Along with racing, teenagers often do what is called a "wheelie" where they lift up their front wheel while riding.
It looks very similar to this, except minus the helmet and the very high quality bike.
This is particularly dangerous because 1) they might fall on their heads and 2) their view is blocked by the giant motorbike covering their face. Their swerving abilities are hindered as well when they are only balancing on their back wheels.
If you do wish to run outside in Hanoi, your best bet for staying safe in terms of traffic safety and not being run over is before 5am or after midnight, when people are still occupied by sleep instead of zooming around on their motorbikes. However, I have attempted to run in the dark, and a majority of the lake had no lights, and was almost impossible to see. Wearing reflective clothing or holding a flashlight would be a good start… even if you are just walking.
Even though running around West Lake may be an extremely interesting run with so many scenes going on at once, a runner in Hanoi must always be prepared for anything… it may even be a good idea to wear a helmet ;).
