In the past 9 months, there have been only two traffic jams lasting longer than 30 minutes in Ho Chi Minh City, down by 22 congestions compared to the same period of 2011 (down by 91.6%).

The information was released Monday at a conference on traffic situation by Nguyen Ngoc Tuong, deputy head of Ho Chi Minh City Traffic Safety Special Committee.

In the 9 months, the city had 551 traffic accidents, resulting in 485 deaths and 217 injuries. This means 53.8 people died on average every month in HCMC.

Compared to the same period of 2011, this is a reduction of 181 accidents (down 24.73%), a reduction in the number of fatalities (down by 138 deaths or by 22.15%) and a decrease in the number of injuries (down by 127 injured people or 37%).

Tuong said the city in the past months has carried out many measures to reduce accidents like issuing 100,000 booklets on road safety, 15,000 booklets on railway safety, screening traffic-themed movies, organizing competitions on traffic, holding song composition contests with traffic themes as well as announcing congestion points on the mass media together with tougher crackdowns on illegal racings and motorbike concentrations.

Deputy chairman of the city People’s Committee Nguyen Huu Tin agreed that the traffic situation is changing for the better but admitted that it is still very complicated and that encroaching on the wrong lane and jumping the red light is “quite common”.

Nearly 7,000 died nationwide

It was earlier reported on September 26 by the National Committee for Traffic Safety that 23,619 traffic accidents occurred nationwide in the past 9 months (9,306 cases, or 28.3 percent, fewer than in the same period last year).

The death toll and number of injured people in Jan-Sep was recorded at 6,908 and 25,002, respectively, reductions of 1,502 (17.9 percent) and 10,634 (29.9 percent) each.

Meanwhile, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), Vietnam now ranks fourth in the world in death toll caused by traffic accidents, with 30-35 fatalities recorded in the country every day.

The three countries ranked above Vietnam are China, the US and Thailand.