As I came back from Phan Thiet I saw a long patch of smeared blood puddles in the Road. Just up the hill from Victoria a dump truck killed yet another motorbike driver. The truck was driving on the wrong side of the road--as usual--and by the very long, bloody tire tracks, they were going very, very fast. I pulled over to the side of the road to examine the blood and lone shoe. As I stood there, 3 busses came bounding in my lane--the wrong side of the road (for them) at high speeds and nearly sideswiped me. Just another in a long line of past and future fatalities.
UPDATE: According to witnesses, the driver who killed the boy driving the motorbike attempted to flee but was detained by onlookers and Victoria security until the police arrived. The identity of the driver and victim are unknown to me at this time.
Dear Adam ,
ReplyDeleteWhy are people driving on the wrong side of the road?Post after post You expound on this and I have to know ,In your opinion why are they doing this?
By the way love your blog
Thanks Paul,
ReplyDeleteI think it simply comes down to habit. It may originate with the fact that automobiles share the roads with bicycles, ox carts, cyclos and a variety of other oddities, and so they are used to swirving around them and getting in the other lane. However, even when the road is empty, Vietnamese drivers always drive at least in the middle of the road and straddle both lanes, if not the wrong lane altogether.
For bus drivers to do this habitually, I've often supposed that they have already decided that if they ever hit someone, that they would do a hit-and-run, so perhaps they don't worry about the possibility as much as western drivers. Indeed, hit-and-runs are extremely common in Vietnam.