Over half of road accidents in Vietnam occurred on national roads, arecently released report by the Transport Strategy Institute has shown.
Accidents on provincial roads account for 26 percent and city roads claim 23 percent.
The report concluded that more efforts should be made to improve traffic safety on national roads.
Vietnam'snational roads, a network of roads and a few expressways that link allthe major population centres in the country, remained inadequate interms of both quantity and quality, said Dr Pham Huy Khang, Dean of theHighways and Airdrome Department at the Hanoi-based University ofTransport. Only 43 percent of national roads were of a good standard,according to the report, and more than one fifth were "bad" or "verybad".
The length of national roads is also low, at 0.050km persquare km and 0.2km per 1,000 people. The figures were "small comparedto regional countries", said the report.
According to anothertraffic safety assessment that covered 3,800km of Vietnam's nationalroads in 2009, only 8 percent of them were "perfectly safe" for cars,and 6 percent for motorbikes.
"I usually get scared when I haveto drive on national roads. Without hard shoulders, it's reallydangerous for mixed vehicles to be in high-speed traffic," said Le ManhHung, a road user from Hanoi.
Khang said Vietnam should have more expressways to improve traffic safety.
Expressways,as recognised internationally, must have no intersections or sharpbends and must have multiple lanes and hard shoulders, and be builtsolely for cars and lorries (not motorbikes).
With thatdefinition, only the HCM-Trung Luong Expressway in the south and theThang Long Expressway in the north came close to meeting internationalstandards, said Khang.
A total of 13,700 road accidents with morethan 11,000 deaths were reported in Vietnam last year, according to theNational Traffic Safety Committee.
The number of accidents andcasualties reduced by 2.4 and 0.4 percent respectively in the first twomonths of this year in comparison to the same period in 2010./.
Accidents on provincial roads account for 26 percent and city roads claim 23 percent.
The report concluded that more efforts should be made to improve traffic safety on national roads.
Vietnam'snational roads, a network of roads and a few expressways that link allthe major population centres in the country, remained inadequate interms of both quantity and quality, said Dr Pham Huy Khang, Dean of theHighways and Airdrome Department at the Hanoi-based University ofTransport. Only 43 percent of national roads were of a good standard,according to the report, and more than one fifth were "bad" or "verybad".
The length of national roads is also low, at 0.050km persquare km and 0.2km per 1,000 people. The figures were "small comparedto regional countries", said the report.
According to anothertraffic safety assessment that covered 3,800km of Vietnam's nationalroads in 2009, only 8 percent of them were "perfectly safe" for cars,and 6 percent for motorbikes.
"I usually get scared when I haveto drive on national roads. Without hard shoulders, it's reallydangerous for mixed vehicles to be in high-speed traffic," said Le ManhHung, a road user from Hanoi.
Khang said Vietnam should have more expressways to improve traffic safety.
Expressways,as recognised internationally, must have no intersections or sharpbends and must have multiple lanes and hard shoulders, and be builtsolely for cars and lorries (not motorbikes).
With thatdefinition, only the HCM-Trung Luong Expressway in the south and theThang Long Expressway in the north came close to meeting internationalstandards, said Khang.
A total of 13,700 road accidents with morethan 11,000 deaths were reported in Vietnam last year, according to theNational Traffic Safety Committee.
The number of accidents andcasualties reduced by 2.4 and 0.4 percent respectively in the first twomonths of this year in comparison to the same period in 2010./.
