LookAtVietnam – The police and transportation agencies should co-operate to ensure traffic safety and order and reduce accidents.

Strict penalties should be meted out for violations of road rules, including speeding, overloading coaches, picking up and dropping off passengers at unregulated spots, not wearing helmets, and drunken driving.

Fewer deaths

Local authorities should make sure they monitor the situation efficiently to ensure road-users’ safety, he said.

Police in provinces with a large number of accidents, deaths, and injuries should make efforts to reduce the number, Tiem added.

Strict penalties should be meted out for violations of road rules, including speeding, overloading coaches, picking up and dropping off passengers at unregulated spots, not wearing helmets, and drunken driving.

Tiem also urged local authorities to focus on raising public awareness of traffic rules.

The General Police Department said there had been 10,800 road accidents in the country by November, in which 10,168 people were killed and nearly 7,000 injured.

This marked a decrease of 5 per cent over the same period of last year, said Cao Xuan Hong, deputy head of the department, attributing it to the resolute effort made by local authorities.

Of the country’s 63 cities and provinces, 32 reported fewer accidents than last year.

But traffic congestion remained high, particularly in large cities, Hong said.

There have been 230 severe traffic jams this year, 110 more than last year.

To make matters worse, there were nearly 100 cases of people attacking and injuring police officers.

The traffic police have fined nearly 5 million people for flouting road rules, collecting VND1.17 trillion (US$65.4 million) and seizing more than 648,900 automobiles and motorbikes.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News