Remember Your Helmet!
Once again I see how fast time flies by and I have not yet written any posts about what I wanted to, but I need to write about this hmmm… event in Vietnamese history of traffic. From the 15th of December it became required by law for everyone riding a motorbike or scooter to wear helmet in the city, before helmet was only required when driving on the highways also a law which has been added within the last couple of years.
I started to wear my helmet a couple of days before to sort of get into the habit and my wife made sure to buy helmets for everybody in the family. Almost everyone continued to ride their motorbike or scooter without wearing a helmet up until and on the day before the 15th of December, so I thought well yeah, tomorrow might not be that different after all, but I was quite wrong! Monday when I was on my way to work I saw that almost everybody was now wearing a helmet, apparently no one saw any reason for wearing it before they really had to, and I must admit that I have heard some complaints about wearing the helmet none the less.
However I think it’s pretty cool that this law has been made because it is my impression that a lot of people looses their life caused by head injuries if they are involved in an accident (no hard facts just a hunch). I used to buy my daily ice coffees outside the company and the lady who owned the shop had a son who used to be a cook, but after an accident on his motorbike he bound to a wheelchair, and he suffered from some sort of brain damage. The fine you will get for driving without a helmet should also encourage all to wear the helmet, from one of my colleagues I learned that it costs over 200.000 VND if the police stops you without a helmet on, 200.000 VND is around 13 USD, and is plenty to actually buy a helmet.
The funny or scary thing is that besides from the helmet everything else about the Vietnamese traffic is its good old same, people are still driving hazardously through the streets, still against the direction of the traffic in the wrong side of the street or on the pavement where such even exists, but at least something is being done and that is great!
Wear your helmet folks!
