Vietnam

Country Summary

Building on the momentum gained after the first-ever national drink-drive seminar in Hanoi in 2009 — and the success of the country’s national helmet strategy — the Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP) worked with its Vietnamese partners to not only build the capacity of traffic police to strategically enhance the enforcement of drink-drive laws, but also encourage key road safety stakeholders to reduce rates of drink driving.

With the support of RS-10 (which aims to reduce road-crash related death and injury in 10 low-and-middle income countries), GRSP carried out several drink-drive enforcement workshops with Vietnamese colleagues at the national and provincial levels in Ninh Binh and Ha Nam in order to foster the sustainable and strategic interventions against drink-driving.

Hosted at the People’s Police Academy in Hanoi, a total of 180 participants were selected from the People’s Police Academy, the Ministry of Public Security, the National Traffic Safety Committee, the Department of Public Security, the Mai Ling Taxi Group, and the Ministry of Health. Amongst the 180 participants, 12 were trained as local trainers, who continued to share their experience and knowledge in their local communities and with colleagues.

The project is contributing to the development of a Drink Drive Enforcement Strategy that is expected to be adopted in 2011. Specific outcomes included, among others:

  • Knowledge in the use of breathalyser technology
  • Expertise on running effective and safe drink-driving checkpoints
  • Capability to transfer knowledge to other operational police officers to ensure standards and effective traffic law enforcement
  • Knowledge on the rationale for drink driving interventions

Working with the Vietnamese Red Cross to improve road safety for children

With funding from the Global Road Safety Initiative a pilot program will be undertaken during 2012 to improve road safety for children around schools. This program will draw on the Safe Routes To School (SRTS) program model that has been delivered successfully for many years in high-income countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The WHO Global Report on Young People Death and Injury contains recommendations that indicate that an SRTS approach could be effective in reducing child road traffic injuries, however, to date there has been no comprehensive programs implemented in low and middle-income countries. SRTS is a local community-based road safety program that is designed to improve safety for children travelling to and from school, but generally also provides benefits for a range of vulnerable road users. The pilot program in Viet Nam will involve:

  • Engineering - installation of appropriate and low-cost local traffic engineering improvements, if required
  • Education - focussed road safety education for children and parents, and education for the local community
  • Enforcement – such as enforcing helmet wearing, parking restrictions around the school and targeting speeding drivers.

Over the past five years we’ve had about 33,000 trauma patients every year and among them, about 20,000 were due to traffic crashes. It’s a huge problem in my country – the hospitals are very crowded.

– Dr. Nguyen Duc Chinh, chief of Septic Surgery Department at Viet Duc Hospital, Hanoi