Hanoi streets may seem chaotic and unpredictable, but they have an underlying logic.

Each year 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes worldwide, and unless changes are made, global road deaths will double by 2020, according to United Nations figures. More than 1,000 young people are killed on roads around the world every day.

In an attempt to shine a spotlight on the problem, the United Nations sponsored its first Global Road Safety Week in April, focusing on young people between the ages of 10 and 25. Nations responded to the UN initiative in various ways, from establishing a road safety day for schoolchildren in Malta to handing out bike helmets in Vietnam.

But establishing safer roads, especially in developing countries where motorization is rapidly increasing and road casualties are rising rapidly, is far more complex than city leaders or transportation experts might imagine.

In an award-winning paper on traffic safety in Vietnam's capital city Hanoi, UC Berkeley graduate student Wendy Tao describes traffic flows on that city's streets as "strokes of paint on a Jackson Pollock canvas." Hanoi streets may seem chaotic and unpredictable, she writes, but traffic there has "an underlying logic negotiated by various actors in space." Those actors include sidewalk vendors, pedestrians, and the ever-increasing hordes of motorcyclists.

Moreover, unless transportation planners understand this underlying logic, traditional methods of establishing safer streets using the so-called three "E's"—engineering, education, enforcement—may not succeed in curtailing traffic deaths and injuries in developing cities like Hanoi.

Crossing to Safety

In her paper, entitled "Informal and Formal Influences on Traffic Safety in Ha Noi, Viet Nam" Tao writes, "The key conceptual assumption imbedded in the traditional engineering approach to traffic safety is that high pedestrian accident and injury levels in developing country cities are a result of mixed traffic, lack of education in road crossings, corrupt enforcement, and lack of traffic lights, crosswalks, and safety infrastructure." Traditional traffic safety solutions, she continues, "include a mapping system, new technologies and better enforcement and lighting."

But these top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches employed by governments and traffic safety experts ignore the more "informal" rules of the road that are "culturally, politically and historically-shaped," she argues. They fail to take into account the large numbers of motorbikes and where they park (often on sidewalks blocking pedestrian passage), the use of sidewalks by street vendors, or the various systems already worked out between the ubiquitous motorcyclists and pedestrians.

"When I first arrived, I had no idea how get across a street," she said in an interview. What she soon learned was that residents don't look for a gap in traffic before crossing. Instead, they step into the street and walk slowly and steadily while the motorbikes, whose drivers seem to be able to see in all directions, swarm around them, "like a river swirling past a stone," she explained. Foreign visitors who are unaware of this system wait for a gap in traffic, then dash across the street, which causes confusion among the motorcyclists who don't know what to make of someone running erratically across the road.

Tao, who received the top prize in the American Planning Association Transportation Planning Division Student Paper Competition, spent six months examining the various neighborhoods of Hanoi: the Ancient Quarter with its narrow winding streets, the French Quarter with its checkerboard-style street system and boulevards, as well as neighborhoods developed during Soviet subsidization and the Doi Moi, or New Reform Era.

Between 1990 and 2003, the number of registered motorcycles increased from 195,000 to 1.2 million, and Hanoi’s streets filled with them. Rapid economic growth and the concurrent motorization, has "fundamentally changed allocation of road space from streets and sidewalks once dominated by walking and cycling to a setting where the motorbike has become king," according to Tao. Although data collection is somewhat unreliable, fatalities and injuries are on the rise.

Unrealistic remedies

Transportation experts would look at these crowded streets and sidewalks where pedestrians wade through motorbikes and say, "'Let's put a traffic light there so pedestrians can cross safely,'" said Tao. But that would not work because motorcyclists tend to weave around or sneak through lights, she added.

Further complicating the matter, safety precautions taken in some neighborhoods of Hanoi are different from those in others, she adds. "In the Ancient and French quarters pedestrians tend to look into the eyes of motorists as they cross, while they don't in the newer areas where roads are broader and they can't really see the driver that well. It's important to understand the local, intuitive knowledge about the roadways."

Tao agrees that traffic safety is an important and growing problem in Hanoi, and that the system cannot be maintained as it is. But she believes transportation planners must first understand what she calls the "interaction of informal, everyday practices on the street." In her paper she urges them to look at the given street design, the historic element in the structures of its public spaces, the users' sense of space, and their perceived risk of accident."

David Ragland, Director of the Traffic Safety Center, agrees. "Traffic safety policies in high-income countries may possibly contain lessons for future efforts in newly motorizing parts of the world," he says. "But traffic safety accomplishments can be elusive, and these new programs very likely will have to take different approaches if they are to succeed."

Warns Tao, "I would say we need to be very wary of designing a system without taking account of the historical, cultural and local knowledge."

 

 

 

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