Thailand vs. Vietnam, traffic and roads competition part 1

I feel as though after 4 years of living in Vietnam and over a decade of living in Thailand that I am well qualified to moderate a competition of this sort. It occurred to me the various nuances and differences between Vietnam and Thailand roads and traffic after I found myself about 4 km away from my apartment after a meeting and because the weather wasn't too hot and there was a breeze that I would just walk home. I too want to get my steps in. During this 40 minute or so walk, I had a lot of time to think about the differences between the two countries and decide upon some pros and cons of both.

Here is what I have come up with.

Competition Number 1: flow of traffic

For someone that is from the western world both are going to seem extremely chaotic. This is because of a lot of reasons but I think the main reasons stems from one thing: Motorbikes. There are millions of motorbikes in both countries and for many people, this is their sole method of transportation. In the west, motorbikes have restrictions on them as far as roadworthiness is concerned but over here we don't really have anything like that in either Vietnam or Thailand. Basically, if you can get it started, it is considered road legal.

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This photo is obviously a gross exaggeration of what normal daily life is like but the concept is there. During peak traffic hours or in always busy parts of the city, a motorbike or motorcycle is going to fill any gap that it can possibly fit in on the roads and especially at stoplights.

I would say that this is a problem but that would be unfair. If either of these countries attempted to enforce the road rules the way that they do in say, USA or Australia, almost all of the people here wouldn't be able to travel anywhere at all. It would be unreasonable to expect them to comply with western road rules. They do have road rules in both Vietnam and Thailand but here is the kicker: They are rarely enforced. In all the times that I have lived in both countries I have never seen anyone ever get pulled over and cited for anything, let alone riding a bike that isn't considered roadworthy.

I made my decision about who the winner is in this category because believe it or not, having some sort of restrictions on speed actually helps traffic move better. In Thailand, you can basically do whatever you want and almost never face any consequences for it unless you end up at a traffic checkpoint and everyone already knows where these will be and what times they operate. Thailand has virtually no traffic control at all and what we end up with is people that treat the motorways as if it was their personal Moto GP raceway. There are no consequences for these people unless they crash - and they frequently do. In Vietnam, there are cameras all over the place so while there are no immediate consequences for driving like a dickhead or not wearing a helmet, when the owner goes to renew their registration there will be monetary consequences that are tabulated by simply matching the violating vehicle with the license plate. These figures can get seriously high very quickly to the point where the owner learns a harsh lesson and perhaps has their bike or car confiscated if they are unable to pay.

In Thailand, you simply get away with whatever you want and there are no consequences for that. The only time I have ever heard of anyone getting any sort of speeding ticket was on these very small portions of highway that exist in the country and the highway patrol actually does have radar sections and will pull people aside and fine them a very small amount of money. So small in fact that it is determined by the officer in most situations and they base the fine by gauging the individual and negotiating on the spot. I would imagine that most of this money simply ends up in the pockets of the officers too. Once again, the locals are very aware of where these speed-traps are and that will be the only time that they slow down during their entire day.

Since there are consequences for speeding and not adhering to certain safety in Vietnam and there is nothing of the sort in Thailand, Vietnam gets a very good edge as far as flow of traffic is concerned. In a place where the person who drives aggressively gets to go fast at the expense of everyone else actually needing to move slower, everybody loses other than the person who drives like a jerk.

road design

Another factor to consider however is how the roads themselves are designed to accommodate such a massive amount of travelers. I have not lived everywhere in both places but I have lived in or visited enough of both to say that Thailand definitely has put more time, effort, and money into providing a highway system that keeps traffic moving far better than Vietnam.

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Thailand has highway systems and expressways that are built around or even above other roads that experience heavy traffic and therefore traffic jams. These are surprisingly good and the type of vehicle that can go on them is controlled at access points. There are no motorbikes allowed on the major ones in places such as Bangkok and therefore the traffic congestion at local points below is eased immensely. In Vietnam, outside of certain very rare exceptions such as a few highways in Saigon and Hanoi, they appear to just build more lanes and more lanes on the same roads until they run out of land. This does very little to address the overall problem and that is why the city I live in, Da Nang, has horrible traffic despite covering a relatively large amount of land and only has around 1 million people in it.

I regularly compare Da Nang in Vietnam to Chiang Mai in Thailand because they have roughly the same land mass as well as the same population. Chiang Mai built a "ring road" that circles almost all of the downtown area and there are no traffic lights at all until you are leaving the ring road. This results in people being able to get to the other side of town without ever stopping at a stoplight. In Da Nang, if you need to go to the other side of town get ready to spend a HUGE amount of time sitting at stoplights because there is simply no other way to get there.

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I lived in the NE portion of this map and because of the ring road, i was able to get anywhere in the city quite rapidly. In Vietnam I will often choose to simply not leave my neighborhood because I know it is going to be a huge hassle should I decide to go just 5km from where I live.

Because of this poor planning for the future on Vietnam's part, **Thailand easily wins in this category. **

Intersections and how they are handled

This is going to seem like a strange one, and the reason why I place Vietnam as the winner might seem very strange to people that have never spent time in this part of the world.

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Vietnam doesn't always have a stop-light, stop sign, or even a designated "right of way" at an intersection. In fact, I have never seen a stop sign anywhere the entire time I have lived in Vietnam. The entire country seems to be built on a grid-style of road so of course there are a ton of intersections. When you arrive at this intersection this is where the "Vietnamese style" of driving just takes over. It can be very daunting as a foreigner driving in these situations because while it does appear completely lawless, it just kind of works. For whatever reason, everyone seems to understand where they can go in order for the most people to be able to get through the intersection. There's a lot of beeping of horns and what not, but everyone gets through and a lot faster than they would do so if there was a rigid system the likes of which we have in USA. You simply slow down and keep your head on a swivel and make sure to do your best to accommodate everyone and as crazy as it seems as an onlooker, it just kind of works.

I can't point to exactly WHY it works, but it just does. Now in Thailand they made a mistake when they tried to pretend as though they are joining the western world and are going to have things like yield and stop signs all over the place. You have one group of people that are going to adhere to the sign and then another group that is just going to do whatever they want at the expense of others convenience and safety. This results in chaos and danger because you have half the people adhering to one set of rules and another set of people adhering to another, completely different set of rules.

In Vietnam, everyone is adhering to the same rules even though it looks like chaos.

I don't think this was intentional but Vietnam ends up defeating Thailand in this category because the roads simply work in most situations. I have seen very few accidents since I moved here even though the roads are constantly filled with cars and bikes going every which direction.

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So in conclusion, both countries' roads seem like absolute mayhem compared to what we would likely see in the west. Neither of them are ideal but the idea behind doing this is to declare a winner. From what I have seen and experienced in my many years of living in both countries I declare the winner of "flow of traffic" to Vietnam.

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