Traffic

I've been meaning to write about the traffic in Vietnam for a while. Now that I'm in Saigon, it's seems like the right time. As I'm sure you know, the traffic here is primarily motorbikes. I saw a statistic for Hanoi (a city of 3 or 4 million people) that 83% of trips are made by motorbike.

There are even more motorbikes here in Saigon. In a city of 8 million folks, if 83% of them are using motorbikes, that equals... a lot of motorbikes. There is more traffic here, but I think the traffic in Hanoi is more unpredictable, a city of narrow crooked medieval lanes to Saigon's wide Haussman-esque boulevards.

Navigating the streets on foot or on bicycle in either place is a challenge. You would think that people would stop at traffic lights, or yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk with a green light, or even that if you were going down a one-way street, there would be nobody barreling toward you from the other direction. But you would be wrong. As a pedestrian crossing the street on a green light, you have to contend not only with motorbikes turning right without slowing, but also bikes from the other direction turning left, those turning right off of the cross street, as well as those who just chose not to stop at the red light on the cross street. Once you've crossed all those, and you think you're safe about to step onto the sidewalk at the other end, one more motorbike will slip between you and the curb. Then another. Then five more.

Don't even get me started on roundabouts.

A final notable feature of the traffic here is the honking, though I've pretty much tuned it out by now. The horn hear suffers from so much overuse that it's really not effective at trying to convey what it's supposed to mean, namely "Watch out!" Rather, it tends to mean "I'm coming towards you and I'm not going to slow down, so you better get out of the way" or "I'm about to pass you so don't do anything crazy" or maybe just "I have a motorbike!"

A unique feature of honking here is the 'fadeaway' horn, equipped on some buses and taxis. It begins with a startle and then gradually gets quieter over several seconds in a repeating rhythm, a mellow coda to a brash announcement.