A bus travelling from Nha Trang City in thecentral region to HCM City with 30 passengers on board overturnedon National Highway 1A on Jan. 21, killing two passengers andinjuring 10 others.
On the same day, a car collided withtwo motorbikes in Hanoi's Cau Giay district, killing two people andinjuring three others.
According to the Ministry of PublicSecurity's Department of Road and Railroad Traffic Police there were385 traffic accidents in the country between January 14 and January 24that killed 242 people and injured 261.
Hanoi-based VietDuc hospital said between 80-100 road accident victims had been treateddaily – 75 per cent of all its admissions.
However, NguyenTrong Thai, deputy chief of the secretariat of the National Committeefor Traffic Safety, said the death rate was lower than last year. Hesaid, on average 31 people died in traffic accidents each day in the runup to the last year's Tet holiday.
He attributed the majority of deaths to drink driving.
Tran Son, deputy head of the Department of Road and Railroad TrafficPolice's Office of Law Guidance and Traffic Accident Investigation, saidtraffic police had been ordered to step up patrols over the holidays.
Meanwhile, bus terminals and railways stations in HCM City havebeen inundated by travellers looking to return home for the holidays.
Transport officials said the number of passengers at bus and railwaystations was three times higher than normal in the run up to Tet.
Staff at Mien Dong Coach Terminal said there were 40,000 passengers wishing to travel by bus on Sunday alone.
"Every year it is the same. In the last ten days of the lunar year, busterminals, are congested around the clock," said Nguyen Van Ut, a xe om(motorbike taxi) driver at Mien Dong coach station.
It is a similar story at nearby Sai Gon Railway Station.
Nguyen Van Thanh, the station's deputy director, said about 135,000passengers were expected to travel from HCM City to central andnorthern provinces between now and the first day of Tet.
Le Quang Dung, an official at HCM City train station, said thevolume of freight transported on the railways also rose sharply over theholiday period.
Highways in and around the city's suburbs are also congested.
On the Hanoi Highway, traffic is virtually at a standstill for mostof t♍he🔯 day at the Thu Duc and Binh Thai intersections./.
Vietnam News Agency w🔜i🤪ns four prizes at 2025 National Press Festival
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