High-Stakes Vietnamese Motorbike Frogger
I’ve seen a lot of chaotic traffic scenes on various continents. The Vietnamese, bar none, is the worst.
There is no close second, not by a country mile.
This fact is a microcosm of an odd juxtaposition that I have yet to figure out in which:
· on the one hand, in certain respects, the culture values deeply social responsibility wherein, in somewhat of an inversion of Western values, the individual’s rights are subordinate to the will and welfare of the collective
· on the other hand, on the nation’s roadways, it’s Darwinian Mad Max Thunderdome. The driving ethos is maximum offense, all the time.
To lamentably little palpable effect on the sweltering concrete jungle streets of Saigon, the government recently enacted a series of new traffic laws designed to improve conditions.
Via The New York Times, January 2025 (emphasis added):
“Vietnam’s motorbike drivers have always tended to treat red lights as suggestions, more slow down than stop. At rush hour, they’ve brought the same indifference to other rules, like: Yield to pedestrians; or, stay off sidewalks; or, do not drive against the flow of traffic.
Some found it charming, the ballet of many wheels dancing around pedestrians. But Vietnam’s road fatality rates have long been among the highest in Asia. And after cracking down on drunken driving, the country’s leaders are now going after everything else.
Under a new law, traffic fines have risen tenfold, with the biggest tickets exceeding $1,500. The average citation tops a month’s salary for many, and that’s more than enough to change behavior. Intersections have become both calmer and more congested by an outbreak of caution. Faulty green lights have even led scared drivers to walk motorbikes across streets the police might be watching…
Making Vietnam more “civilized” (“van minh” in Vietnamese) appears to be the goal. It’s a word the government has often deployed for public order campaigns, signaling what this lower-middle-income country often sees as its north star: the wealth and order of a Singapore, South Korea or Japan…
The streets are Vietnam’s coliseum. Especially in cities, they are the forum where society’s biggest conflicts — between government control and personal freedom, between the elites seeking harmony and strivers seeking income — have long played out.”
Related: Existential Angst in 'Nam (50 Years Late).
The Maximum Death Zone on any Vietnamese roadway is undoubtedly the roundabout.
Probably some colonial gift from the French that stuck around, the Vietnamese love them and construct them at major intersections where city planners would usually insist on a well-oiled set of traffic lights.
If you grew up in the United States, you likely got the “look both ways before crossing the street” talk early on.
Vietnamese drivers apparently never did.
Driver’s education: what name so?
The Vietnamese never, ever look when pulling out onto a busy road from a smaller side street or a parking lot. The onus is on you, their opponent in the Thunderdome, the white man, to dodge them.
Horns blare non-stop, 24/7. Trucks selling coconuts out of the back screech repetitive, rapid-fire advertisements of poor sound quality at maximum volume constantly.
(If you make the mistake of taking up residence on a heavily trafficked Vietnamese thoroughfare and hope to sleep a wink, better invest in ear plugs.)
The painted lines demarcating lanes are apparently mostly for show; they mean nothing to the natives.
I could go on, but I think I’ve begun to paint a picture for you.
Below my wife and I crafted, for you fine people in the Armageddon Safari audience, a smattering of real-life near-death experiences captured from the back of a motorbike on the streets of Ben Tre, Vietnam.
VIDEO
For other hard-knock lessons about how not to die on the side of some Vietnamese superhighway like roadkill, and other lessons related to things besides the Vietnamese highway killing machine, please reference my gold-standard expat novel, Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, now in paperback.
Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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My version of Hell. I broke out in a sweat just reading your post, Ben. Yikes.
Ah, Vietnam traffic. When you are signaling to turn left and someone passes you on the left a second before you make your turn. Or they race past you, cut you off and slam on the brakes. Or they come flying out of an alley or side street and merge without looking. Good times.