South African teacher dies in northern Vietnam accident

Hanoi police are investigating the accident.

The two South African men were driving on National Highway 5 from Hanoi to Hai Phong City when their motorbike hit the back of a car going in the same direction.

Both men fell on the road and one of them was run over by a container truck, local media reported.

The dead person has been identified as 26-year-old Benjamin Joeste. His compatriot, badly injured and hospitalized, has not been identified. Both men were working as teachers at an English language center in Hanoi.

The accident happened at around 7:30 a.m. on Saturday under the Phu Thuy Bridge in Gia Lam District, about a 30-minute drive from downtown Hanoi.

A recent increase in the number of foreigners dying in traffic accidents has raised an alarm.

Last week, a French woman and a Spanish man were killed in a road accident in northern Ha Giang Province after a head-on crash with a truck trailer, prompting provincial authorities to issue a document asking local police to clamp down on traffic violations by foreigners and tighten control on motorbike rental service.

On Monday, a young American woman lost her life in a traffic accident in the northern province of Ha Nam, around one and a half hour drive to the south of Hanoi.

Most bike rental services in Vietnam only require foreign customers to present passports, not driving licenses.

Road crashes are a leading cause of deaths in Vietnam, killing almost one person every hour. A total of more than 9,000 traffic accidents occurred in the first half of this year, killing nearly 4,100 people and injuring over 7,000, according to the National Traffic Safety Committee.