Vietnamese motorbike drivers have always tended to treat red lights as designs, more slow than stop. At the top of the hour they brought the same indifference to other rules, for example: a pedestrian yield; Or stay off sidewalks; Or do not drive against the flow of traffic.
Some considered it a charming, ballet of many rounds dancing around pedestrians. But the rate of mortality on Vietnam roads Among the highest in Asia. And after they intervened on driving under the influence of alcohol, the leaders of the country now go for everything else.
Under the New Testament, traffic fines increased ten times, with the largest tickets exceeding $ 1,500. The average citation takes up a monthly salary for many, and this is more than enough to change behavior. The intersections became calmer and more congested by outbreak of caution. The defective green lights even led the frightened drivers to walk the bikes along the streets that the police could watch.
“It’s safer, it’s better,” said Pham van Lam, 57 years old, cutting trees in front of the Buddhist pagoda this week a busy way on the outskirts of Ho or MINOVY. “But it’s cruel for poor people.”
Make Vietnam more “civilized” (“van minh” in Vietnamese) It seems to be a goal. It is a word that the government often deployed for public order campaigns, which signals what this country often sees with lower medium income as its northern star: wealth and order of Singapore, South Korea or Japan.
All three countries preferred road safety as they grew, as well as China, adhere to the idea that proper streets reflect the achievement of modernization.
But Vietnam has its own specific history and trajectory. Economic growth raised millions of poverty without making them comfort. In most cities there are a number of people, motorbikes, cars and trucks – and communist bureaucracy is Trying to keep up.
The streets are Vietnamese Colosseum. Especially in cities are a forum where the greatest conflicts of society – between government control and personal freedom, among the elites looking for harmony and attacks looking for income – have been playing for a long time.
In 1989, when the state released more than a million people, the admission that the central planning of Soviet style did not bring economic growth, a private enterprise was legalized on the streets. This was followed by a revolution in a small business with small plastic chairs and selling sidewalks.
Home, work and roads merged quickly. Shops have become shops. Motorbikes and food trucks swarmed sidewalks. The paic, thoughtful, walked in operation.
The government sometimes tried to bring order to specific areas. More than ten years ago, anthropologist in Yale saw in such an effort “Convergeration between disciplinary objectives of the late socialist Vietnamese state and the interests of developing property class.”
But just like tropical vegetation that grows wildly on the outskirts of cities, Vietnam’s disrespectful urban culture resists twisting.
In 2007, when the government decided to force motorcycle drivers to wear helmets, obedience was mixed with false compliance. Some people attached kitchen pots to their heads. Many of them still wear a baseball -shaped head and are not much safer than one.
When the police began to aggressively target driving under the influence of alcohol a few years ago by sharply increasing fines and seizure of vehicles, many violencers of the righteous They left their motorbikes behind Rather than pay for them to get back.
Now another will is cooked. Millions of dollars flow (Ho Chi Minh City said that ticket revenues jumped by 35 percent in the first two weeks of the law). Many of them see new rules, along with the added cameras and the provision of rewards for rewards, as more about institutional greed than about security.
“The police just want to take as much money as possible,” said Dinh Ngoc Quang, a motorcycle taxi driver when he waited for customers at a Hanoi intersection, a Vietnamese capital. “Higher fines have hit the pocket of people with lower incomes like me.”
When traffic lights turned red, motorcycle and cars – usually constant – suddenly stopped.
“It’s nice to have the order of traffic, but what about the life of poor people like us who have to work on the street every day?” He added.
Some drivers called a new law oppressing, authoritarian and exploiter. Many of them complain that the fines are too high and that their usual trips last twice as long, they eat taxi and truck drivers who rely on effective delivery. Memories have been stuck about ambulances for hours and people get rich (or poured) for reporting that red light violars have spread to social media.
Alerts of all accounts disrupted the flow.
In large cities, bikes playing old rules often often drive the rear ends who try to be cautious, stop early, sometimes even when the lights are green. Truck drivers stopped wherever they could avoid the fines for work too many hours straight. The intersections are now noticeably louder because the chasing drivers whine, where the operation used to spin and move like a river around the stones.
“We have stuck everywhere all the time,” said Huynh van Mai, a truck driver who regularly operates between Hoio Chi City and the port of Vung Tau, about 60 miles away.
“It’s stressful,” he added, taking a break near the logistics center with towers of shipping containers stacked in a row. “There are so many changes in the law.”
And yet, as many recognize, there is a logic of effort. Since the enforcement began, has begun, Beer sale dropped by 25 percentAnd driving under the influence of alcohol dropped across Vietnam.
Vietnamese national leaders – just a few months to power, with many who have begun their career in the State Security – are eager to go further. It seems that the pursuit of safety and government PODEDD is harmonized: in Hanoi officials announced officials plan Last week, he added 40,000 cameras to about 20,000 already in the capital.
But in such a young country, with an average age of approximately 32, compared to almost 40 for the United States and China, the government seems to realize that a rebellion is inevitable.
In terms of proceedings, the sermon of patience is once a response. As a publicist in one newspaper He recently wrote“Hours of traffic jams are like an extensive test for society where each person has to learn to adapt, receive restrictions and communicate with others.”
In some places there were also concessions of pragmatism. After 10 days of complaints Ho Chi Minh City sent Teams for installing signals allowing motorcycles to turn right at the red intersection. In Hanoi, the local authorities also moved to adjust some traffic lights.
There was a jerk between chaos and order. Although some motorcycle riders continue to increase traffic and sidewalks, they stop much more when they have, along with the growing rows of cars and trucks in the ground.
Reducing success, some commentators began to ask what else could change with big fines – perhaps large garbage tickets would help reduce garbage across the country?
“It takes time and effort to support a civilized style,” said Nguyen NGOC Dien, a former rector on economic and law at the University of the University of Economics and Law at the Vietnamese National University of Ho or Min. “These new traffic regulations are part of this effort.”