Monday, March 30, 2009

Reducing traffic accidents

Reducing traffic accidents

It is believed that the number of the people who have died in traffic accidents is much higher than that of the people who have died of cancer or any other disease. In Ho Chi Minh City, the problem of traffic accidents is really serious. The following measures should be taken to reduce the seriousness/to minimize the consequences of this problem.

Firstly, the system of the main streets in Ho Chi Minh City must be improved or upgraded. It is awful to move along the streets of Ho chi Minh City because most of them are in bad condition and some are full of holes, either big or small. In addition, during the rainy season many streets are flooded with water after a heavy rain. If we are not careful enough, we easily hit other people or fall off our bike or motorbike.

Secondly, law-breaking and drunken riders/drivers should be punished strictly. These law-breaking and drunken riders/drivers are the “devils” of the streets: they operate their motor vehicles at a high speed and sway from one side/curb of the street to the other whenever they feel excited. There is no doubt that one of the main reasons of serious traffic accidents is the riders’ or drivers’ carelessness and lack of self-control.

Last but not least, calling for every citizen’s obeying traffic laws is crucial. The cit dwellers’ awareness of the necessity to obey traffic law is quite low; consequently, they travel along the streets without paying close attention to traffic lights and other signals. Quite often, motor-cyclists occupy the lanes for cars and other four-wheel motor vehicles while taxi drivers speed up, forcing the riders/drivers of other vehicles to give way to them. It takes a lot of time and energy to draw the attention of anyone who does travel along the streets in Ho Chi Minh City to the well-established traffic laws here in particular and to make each of the city dwellers a law-abiding citizen in general. But it is worth it!

In conclusion, we are all overwhelmed by the increasing number of the traffic accidents in Ho Chi Minh City nowadays. It is time to upgrade the whole system of the main streets in this city and apply strong efficient measures both to punish those who break traffic laws and to call for every citizen’s consciousness of obeying these laws strictly whenever he/she travels along the street in this city. The sooner these suggestions will be taken into account, the less serious the traffic accidents happening in Ho Chi Minh City will be.