Hanoi needs to work on road safety

Hanoi administration needs to enact a group of comprehensive measures to improve traffic safety in the city-Photo kinhtedothi.vn

The measures should include ensuring safe road infrastructure, improving the behavior of road users, upgrading the traffic-safety management system and tightening quality control for motorbikes.

These steps were suggested by experts from South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in a workshop with the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport and the People’s Committee of Hanoi on Tuesday.

The workshop was intended to issue a final draft of the master plan for the city’s road safety in the near future, Kinh te do thi (Economic and Urban Affairs) newspaper reported.

Experts said the plan should focus on reducing traffic jams because the city has a huge number of motorbikes, which cause the majority of traffic.

The experts also pointed out shortcomings in managing outdated motorbikes.

City data show that it is home to 5.3 million motorbikes, nearly half of which are many years old.

Workshop attendees advised city officials to set up a system to periodically check the quality of the motorbikes in circulation. They also said it would be necessary to test motorbike exhaust.

Khuat Viet Hung, deputy chairman of the National Committee for Traffic Safety, admitted that there were a number of very old motorbikes still in use in Hanoi.

The city lacked regulations for vehicle expiry dates, Hung said. He agreed motorbike fumes should be monitored and controlled.

“It will be taken step by step,” he said. “We should first issue a pilot plan to control fumes for motorbikes with engines of 175 cubic centimetres or more until 2020.”

“After the pilot period, we could collect comments from drivers and make adjustments before applying the rule to motorbikes in general,” he added.

Deputy director of the city’s Transport Department Ngo Manh Tuan said the city had already implemented a range of measures to curb traffic jams.

However, it would take time to bring the situation under control. The city was actively seeking more effective traffic-control solutions and methods of ensuring traffic safety, he said.