Vietnam road safety sees continued improvement

Vietnam continues to buck the trend for most Asian countries by managing to reduce its road death toll. Right acrossAsia vehicle numbers are increasing and in many, if not most countries road death rates are growing fast. However Vietnam is having considerable success in lowering its annual road death toll. New data shows that since 2011, the country has managed to cut crashes by 19.5% while road deaths have dropped by 7%/year. Since 2011 there have been 48,020 reported road deaths in Vietnam along with 158,130 crashes. Vietnam had set a target of lowering its road death rate to below 10 for each 100,000 of population, which has now been achieved. The statistics show that in 2015 the country had an average of 9.68 deaths/100,000 of population, down from 12.97/100,000 of population in 2011. This data was announced at an international seminar on traffic safety and solutions for motorbike commuting, part of an annual meeting of the Federation of Asian Motorcycle Industries (FAMI) held recently. In a bid to raise public awareness of road safety issues, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security's Traffic Police General Department has improved traffic enforcement and introduced higher fines for traffic offences.