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The super-destructive terror strikers

The super-destructive terror strikers

Sunday, April 14, 2013, 17:28 GMT+7

Sagging under the weight of severely overloaded dump trucks, many roads, a number of which have just been built or undergone repair, have been ploughed up, tattered with massive potholes and ridges or had their bases exposed.

Severe, irreversible damage

The national and provincial highways in northern Ha Nam and Ninh Binh provinces are exposed to the densest daily circulation of severely overloaded, oversized trucks in the entire northern region.

Every day, hundreds of such vehicles rumble back and forth, particularly at the border point between the Phap Van- Cau Gie Highway and Duy Tien District, and along provincial road DT.494 to But Son stone mine in Ha Nam Province, taking a severely damaging toll on the roads.

According to locals, these roads, which were tarred just some months ago, have sustained extensive damage in many places.

One of the most seriously damaged sections is the one leading to the bridge in Hong Son Commune, where a local tripped over a pothole and died instantly.

The national highways in central Da Nang City also suffer wide cracks and serious sinking from the overweight trucks, which are a nightmare for locals, especially at night.

Worse, the trucks rumble all day long on urban streets. Within two days of reporting, hundreds of large trucks, branded Howo, Dongfeng and Lima, and filled with towering piles of loose construction materials such as sand and broken stones, were seen roaring blatantly along streets in Ha Nam’s Phu Ly Town. The trucks went past several traffic police checkpoints without being stopped at all.

According to Hoang The Luc, from the Transport Ministry, few roads in Vietnam except highways and special roads are designed to withstand 12 tons for each pivot. Most roads can sustain only 10 tons for each pivot.

“If we can’t tackle overloaded trucks, the road maintenance fund, paid by locals, will be meaningless. For example, a road with an expected 20-year ‘lifespan’ is rapidly deteriorated by overloaded trucks, considerably raising maintenance costs,” Luc analyzed.

Overloaded trucks also pose grave air and noise pollution hazards, as well as cause fatal accidents.

By having their open-box beds expanded,  dump trucks can be loaded with higher piles of loose construction materials, which easily fall out onto the streets, causing air pollution and posing grave danger to other vehicles, Tri noted.

“When speeding on streets in residential areas, overloaded trucks also emit more noise and exhaust. Our office building sometimes shakes as encumbered trucks rumble past the street in front,” he added.

Grappling to tackle

The local traffic police force and local governments have struggled to deal with the plague to little avail.

According to Lieutenant-Colonel Le Minh Duong from the Da Nang Police Department, no fines are imposed on the Dongfeng overloaded truck fleets on their usual routes during the month, as most of them are filled to the brim, which is legally acceptable, though it causes serious overloading due to the incompatibility between the designed load capacity and the dimensions of the open-box beds.

Doan Van Loi, from Ha Nam Transportation Department, said his office recently began requesting that truck owners stop exceeding the trucks’ designed capacity and they have begun to boost traffic police activity on the affected roads. Yet the efforts have yet to bring about the desired change.

“There are cases when, after being stopped, a number of truck drivers won't cooperate with the police, as the big firms owning the trucks have good ‘relationships’ with high-authority officers,” Tuyen noted.

The dilemma facing the Ha Nam police force isn’t an isolated case.

“We’re under considerable pressure from our superiors. Whenever we stop overloaded trucks owned by big firms, we immediately get phone calls from our bosses to intervene. Once, when most overloaded trucks were forbidden on a road, an encumbered fleet owned by a big firm blatantly kept driving their overloaded trucks on the road,” said Nguyen Van Hanh, head of the Ninh Binh Traffic Inspectorate.

According to the Ha Nam Traffic Inspectorate, they were able to fine only 235 violating trucks in 2012 and 90 within the first few months of 2013, a humble number compared to the actual number of trucks which exist on roads today.

Hanh added that the overloaded trucks which meet registration requirements and drivers aren’t susceptible to fines.

Tuoi Tre

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