How to deal with aggressive traffic culture

Glaring at me and yelling vulgar words into my face was a girl dressed in office clothes and about the age of my daughter.

After that she slid into an empty space and sped away, leaving me bewildered and speechless.

Luckily she did not have a buffalo bone, I told myself, remembering a recent story about road rage in Binh Duong Province.

That drama happened on Aug. 11.

After a near collision on the road, a 46-year-old driver chased a 26-year-old for more than two kilometers, and forced the latter to the side of the road, grabbed a buffalo bone lying on the sidewalk, broke the younger man’s car window, and forced him out and made him kneel down and apologize.

He threatened the young man and asked, "Do you know who I am?"

That night he was arrested by the police. The whole country knows who he is.

A still image from security camera footage shows a 46-year-old man about to break the car window of another man after a near collision in the southern Binh Duong Province, Aug. 8, 2024.

This kind of behavior is not unique. In December 2017, in HCMC, a motorbike driver had to kneel and bow three times to be let go after crashing into a car.

Last month, in the Central Highlands, a groom seemed to forget where he was headed and jumped out of his car and rushed to chase and beat up a dump truck driver after a collision.

In such encounters, though the collision merely causes some scratches on their vehicles, the drivers involved are willing to wield rocks and knives to fight until someone has to be hospitalized.

I read about those incidents with mixed emotions: sadness, pity and above all, confusion about why people have to try to prove their point for nothing.

Competition often arises in a state of scarcity. If the roads are big enough for everyone to drive freely, surely no one will fight on them.

But the reality is that many roads are crowded and the infrastructure cannot meet everyone’s demand for smooth rides.

Somehow, that prompts many Vietnamese to hit the road with a competitive mindset and without respect for the rules or other drivers.

On many roads, lanes do not exist because people just drive all over the place, trying to squeeze themselves into any space available.

If you look at the jostling on the road, it seems like Vietnamese value time the most on earth. But I doubt that. People spend hours surfing social networks and sitting at beer bars chatting but refuse to wait a few seconds at the red light?

That guy was able to go, why should I wait? That mindset is contagious: If one person runs a red light, several others will follow; one person drives on a sidewalk, and a whole convoy of vehicles follow competing for space with pedestrians.

They may not be in a hurry or pressed for time, but, when in traffic, everyone gives themselves the priority to get ahead.

It is as if being left behind is an intolerable feeling of failure and thus the willingness to bully others when encountering obstacles on the road.

I think the underlying source of the problem is the habit of disobeying the law in many aspects of life, including traffic.

An obvious example is that many people often only learn how to drive but not the road signs, and have a driver's license but do not understand traffic rules. Furthermore, the law is not always enforced in collisions. People are not in the habit of remaining at the scene or calling insurance officials and the police to settle the dispute.

They resolve collisions on the road themselves. Regardless of who is in the right or wrong, the winner is usually the stronger, more aggressive person.

I accepted to be the weak and lose when involved in a collision one time. I was waiting in the left turn lane for the green light when a car right behind me turned into the "straight" lane and smashed into the back of my car.

There was no question as to who was in the wrong here, but in an attempt to scare me into reducing my demand for compensation, the driver called his relatives -- two aggressive people -- and pressured me with an arrogant attitude, forcing me to accept an unfair compensation.

The question "Do you know who I am?" with all its nuances and the flexibility of Vietnamese language, is an interestingly vivid expression of the abuse of power in place of the rule of law.

That rhetorical question automatically classifies the person as superior, as someone who has some power or knows someone in power, while the rest, including their victims in the traffic collision, are "nobody".

It is the epitome of inequality regardless of the law.

Traffic collisions are undesirable.

So what is the solution to minimize human conflicts during daily traffic?

An apology, a sincere smile or a sincere handshake will, in most cases, work a miracle, instantly dissolving and calming anger.

That is awareness, kind behavior and traffic culture, but it needs to be accumulated through the educational process.

It is not easy to change a community of 100 million people in a day or two.

In some special cases, where the traffic culture is one-sided, we even need to eat humble pie to avoid escalating a conflict.

I therefore understand very well the choice of the younger driver in the Binh Duong incident, who thought of his wife and children in the car and knelt before the man holding a beef bone in his hand.

However, when looking at the bigger picture, society cannot function based on personal awareness or acts of concession alone. Society can only function normally when "who you are" is not important; what matters is who is right and who is wrong.

In certain situations where traffic etiquette is only observed by one party, sometimes we must "swallow our pride," as the old saying goes, "a single concession can prevent greater conflict." I can therefore sympathize with the male driver who, thinking of his family, chose to kneel before a man holding a beef bone.

The only positive from the story in Binh Duong is that technology exposed everything through security cameras, and the older driver was arrested.

Those who do wrong must be punished, and those who commit crimes must be punished according to the law.

That simple rule, if followed in every single incident, will gradually raise awareness, forcing people to behave and ensure equality before the law for all citizens.

*To Ngoc Doanh is a communications expert.