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Any of Hanoi's hundreds of meandering alleys or tree-lined avenues will be choked with vendors selling prickly, blood-red dragon fruit, pulpy mangoes or flopping, live fish from twin baskets.
Flowers are sold from bicycles. Cyclo drivers pedal loads of 20-foot copper pipes. At 3 p.m. schoolgirls hold hands while riding bicycles, five across. In the early evening, after the rain, good-looking teenagers court for hours
from their motorbikes, as they lap around Ho Chi Minh Park or Lenin Park.
This placid imagery, which practically explains what is so delightful about life in Vietnam, has also become 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 auto makers 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 is in Vietnam to market one of the world's most well-engineered luxury automobiles, and in fact owns one himself. But doesn't dare drive it on the streets of Hanoi. "Can't do anything with it here," he laments.
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