[Update Below] On August 21st, the Khanh Hoa Province Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued a decision to ban tourist companies from renting motorbikes to foreigners who don’t have Vietnamese licenses.
Truong Dang Tuyen, director of the Department, said that most foreign visitors don’t have Vietnamese licenses and are unfamiliar with local traffic patterns, resulting in sometimes deadly road accidents.
Ironically, it seems as though the regulation stems from a request by the Russian government.
At the 9th annual Vietnam-Russia consular consultation conference in Moscow on July 9, Russian authorities recommended that Vietnam not allow Russian tourists to rent motorbikes without local licenses.
In response, the provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has requested that all tourist companies based in Khanh Hoa Province not rent motorbikes to foreigners if they fail to show a valid driver’s license:
“We will also ask hotels and other accommodation facilities for foreigners to comply with the new regulation for safety reasons,” Tuyen said.
Under Vietnamese law, foreigners who stay in the country for more than three months and hold a valid international or national driver’s license can apply for a Vietnamese license. But since most visitors to Nha Trang stay only for a few days or weeks, the regulation nominally bans tourists from renting bikes.
Even if they were to go through all the motions of obtaining a local license, most foreigners would be stymied by the driving test which is only offered in Vietnamese (though from our experience, the written test is usually not given to foreigners).
With a comparatively small expat community, this regulation probably won’t cause too many waves in Nha Trang. But we dread to think what would happen if these new standards were applied to Saigon.
Free WIFI, anyone?
[Tuoi Tre]
Update 17/9: In addition to Nha Trang, traffic police in several tourist areas such as Mui Ne and Phu Quoc Island are considering restrictions on foreign drivers.
The move aims to protect foreigners in Vietnam, where roughly 30 people die from traffic accidents every day.
Even as national driving deaths are on the rise - In the first half of this year, more than 5,500 traffic accidents nationwide killed 4,913 people and injured 3,465 others, an increase of 193 cases and 255 fatalities over last year – expats and motorbike rental shops which rely on tourist money are critical of driving bans.
Another issue is ‘foreign exceptionalism’ wherein foreign drivers are pulled over less than Vietnamese due to language barriers. In addition, foreign drivers involved in fatal accidents face much softer penalties than locals.
Thanh Nien offers the example of Taiwanese expat Chen Chang Hao:
“[Hao] was convicted of “violating regulations on controlling road means of transport” for driving on the wrong side of the road and crashing into a Vietnamese man in Binh Duong Province, killing him, in May 2012. Hao was eligible to receive up to three years in prison, in addition to paying a fine of up to VND50 million.
However, on August 14, the HCMC People’s Court decided to fine him just VND30 million (US$1,410), sparing him jail time or even probation.”
Lieutenant Colonel Dang Tran Duong, chief of Phan Thiet’s traffic police, said the increasing number of foreign tourists driving on local roads constitutes a threat to public safety, citing drunk driving as the most common offense.
Many argue that simplifying the procedures for foreigners to obtain local licenses is a better option than an outright ban:
“According to regulations, only foreigners who have lived in Vietnam for at least three months can apply for a driver’s license. Since there is no test available in English or any other foreign language, applicants must be relatively fluent in Vietnamese.”
In addition, Nguyen Van Dung, head of Nha Trang’s traffic police, said most foreigners are tourists who are in the country for less than the prerequisite three-month residency requirement.
Thanh Nien interviewed Melvyn Jones, who concluded that paperwork is not the key to increasing road safety:
“Both Vietnamese and tourists can drive like lunatics. What is needed is more training and law enforcement.”
