Traffic accidents in Vietnam are mostly caused by carelessness and poor awareness on the part of drivers, although inadequate infrastructure is also partly to blame.

Thousands of people are killed by traffic accidents in Vietnam each year, while the financial loss alone is over US$800 million.

Thanh was speaking at the seminar titled Road Safety for a Better life, co-held by non-government organization Handicap International from Belgium, Belgian Development Cooperation and Dong Nai Traffic Committee. The event attracted delegates from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

In his presentation, Thanh said 95% of traffic accidents are due to subjective reasons relating to drivers, while 2% are due to poor infrastructure, 1% of cases due to technical problems with transport means and the remainder comes from other reasons.

Approximately 23% of accidents are caused by car drivers, while up to 74% are by motorbike riders and the remainder by other transportation means.

The non-government organization Global Road Safety Partnership shared the concern, especially the problem of drunk driving.

The organization has conducted a survey on traffic accidents by polling injured drivers who had been hospitalized at Viet Duc and Saint Paul hospitals in Hanoi from November last year to May 2009. The survey shows that many traffic accidents were caused by drunken drivers.

About 37% of injured drivers who caused traffic accidents said they had used alcohol within eight hours before accidents occurred. Such drivers had alcoholic content from 52.9 to 65.2% in their breath.

From the survey’s result, Nguyen Lan Huong, director of Global Road Safety Partnership, said that the number of drunken drivers was at an alarming rate which worsens the situation of traffic accidents worsen.

VietNamNet/SGT