VietNamNet Bridge – Schools are to blame for the horrific number of traffic accidents caused by adolescents in Viet Nam, said Chief of Secretariat Than Van Thanh of the National Traffic Safety Committee.

Many students from Central Highland Dak Lak Province’s Buon Ma Thuot City go to school by motorbike.

"Schools have not made enough effort to prevent kids from driving motorbikes nor equip them with an adequate understanding of traffic laws," he said on Tuesday, after a conference held by the Ministry of Education and Training.

"The younger generation are violating traffic laws. I often see three or four kids on one motorbike in the streets while none of them are old enough to hold a driving licence," he said.

At the conference, marking two years of the campaign calling on students to follow traffic laws, the deputy head of the Public Security Ministry’s Traffic Police Department, Vu Do Anh Dung, said that the situation was bad.

"Our video recordings at several Ha Noi-based schools show more than ten cases where students violated traffic laws right at the gate of a senior secondary school within just one hour."

This year’s traffic safety month in September saw more than 600 school students breaking traffic laws in the capital, according to police records.

In HCM City, more than 3,700 out of 10,140 traffic accidents in the first half of the year involved youngsters under the age of 24, reported the municipal Traffic Police Department.

As a result, about 20 per cent of the victims losing their lives in traffic accidents were of school or university age (under 25), said Thanh, a National Traffic Safety Committee’s senior official.

He warned that if the problem was not properly addressed, the future consequences to the whole of society would be serious.

"The traffic police are trying to provide order and safety today while our teachers are attempting to ensure traffic laws are observed in the future," said Thanh.

"If we don’t take it seriously, we will not solve the cause of the problem and Viet Nam won’t be able to become an industrial country in 10-15 years time as targeted."

He suggested traffic laws should be included as a compulsory subject in school curriculum.

Deputy Minister of Education and Training Nguyen Vinh Hien said that the responsibility shoud start with the families. Parents themselves must not allow children without driving licences to drive motorbikes, he said.

Traffic accidents are claiming about 30 lives and injuring 20 people every day in Viet Nam.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News

 

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