(VOVworld) - Enhancing public awareness of traffic safety culture is imperative to ease congestion and reduce traffic accidents, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said at a conference in Hanoi on December 8.


He recognised decreases in the number of accidents, deaths and injuries over the past five years but reckoned that traffic accident death toll of 9,000 remains very high. The Deputy PM, who is also head of the National Traffic Safety Committee, urged all localities to find solutions to reduce the number of traffic accidents by 5-10 percent and fatalities by 5,000 between 2016 and 2020.
He suggested boosting the application of information technology to ensure traffic safety and better urban planning.
According to the Ministry of Public Security’s Transport Police Department and the Ministry of Transport’s Vietnam Maritime Administration, 158,125 traffic accidents occurred across the country between 2010 and 2015, killing 48,015 people and injuring 162,058 others.
The figures represented a decline of 18.06 percent in the number of cases and 20.52 percent and 22.33 percent in the number of deaths and injuries, respectively.