The tragic accident occurred at 2:30 a.m. on September 30, caused by the Thanh Buoi driver, killing 5 people and injuring many others, with signs of violations being announced, raising concerns about passenger transport services by car.
The incident became more serious when the inspection team led by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport last week discovered many signs of violations at Thanh Buoi Company Limited.
In particular, this bus company does not go to the station to pick up and drop off passengers but often does this at the company office. The company "disguises" the transportation of passengers as contract vehicles or tourist vehicles so as not to have to go to the station. There are many cases where drivers violate the continuous driving time (over 4 hours). The driving time per day is more than 10 hours compared to the regulations, there are cases of speeding violations 5 times/month on the same vehicle.
It is worth noting that although these signs of violations have just been pointed out by the Department of Transport, according to press reports, these problems have been going on for a long time, with the bus company even organizing "illegal buses and stations" right next to the Traffic Inspectorate headquarters and in many other places...
Specifically, this bus company has set up many stations, including public stations, "disguised" stations, stations with decisions but also stations without decisions. For example, the station in Da Lat City operates publicly even though there is not enough space to arrange a bus station. Or the bus company set up a station at 66-68 Le Hong Phong (HCMC), but transfers passengers to 48C parallel road of Hanoi Highway.
The bus company only registered one route to Can Tho, the remaining routes, especially the Ho Chi Minh City - Da Lat route, run hundreds of fixed trips every day but are "disguised" as contract vehicles or tourist vehicles.
This situation has existed for many years. Even when being inspected, the bus company continues to pick up and drop off passengers as before.
It should be noted that among the top large car companies in Ho Chi Minh City, Thanh Buoi is rated as having the highest number of cars. On the website, this company announced that it owns nearly 300 cars of all kinds including: tourist cars, passenger cars and trucks imported completely from Korea and Japan.
For the Ho Chi Minh City - Da Lat route, the company publicly announces that there will be a contract bus every 30 minutes, with ticket prices ranging from 290,000 - 400,000 VND depending on the type of bus and bed.
The story of fixed-route passenger buses "disguised" as contracts, speeding, and recklessly overtaking, causing traffic accidents has been mentioned many times, but the particularly serious traffic accident caused by the driver of Thanh Buoi bus company is a typical case to frankly look at the shortcomings and inadequacies in management work.
As Mr. Tran Van Quyen, Chairman of the Vietnam Automobile Transport Association, assessed, "State management at the local level is still limited".
Obviously, the specific localities here are the Department of Transport of Ho Chi Minh City and Da Lat City, which have been lax in management and annual inspection. These specialized agencies have not regularly reviewed the information recorded on the journey monitoring data system to promptly correct and handle through the form of revoking badges and handling speeding vehicles.
In addition, there is the responsibility of the People's Committees of localities related to the management and licensing of bus stations. And there is the traffic police force. Why can drivers whose driving licenses have been confiscated for months still easily "slip" through checkpoints on the more than 300km stretch of Ho Chi Minh City - Da Lat?
The lack of responsibility of local management agencies and professional agencies allowed the bus company to show signs of violations for a long time, culminating in a fatal accident before the incident was exposed, which is an expensive lesson.
At the recent online conference to review the work of ensuring traffic order and safety in the first 9 months of 2023, Minister of Transport Nguyen Van Thang requested functional units to quickly amend regulations to manage the operation of transport vehicles more effectively.
According to current regulations, vehicles violating the speed limit more than 5 times/month will only have their badges revoked and can be reissued very quickly afterwards.
The Minister of Transport said that there must be stronger and more drastic sanctions, from revoking the licenses of violating vehicles to terminating and permanently banning car companies from doing business in this field.
In order to avoid a second Thanh Buoi, it is time for relevant agencies to launch a general inspection and review of passenger transport business activities nationwide, publicly announce violating bus companies and take timely corrective actions.
At the same time, it is necessary to urgently complete the software for managing the business of transporting by car to better serve the online monitoring work instead of post-inspection as at present. The purpose is to directly warn businesses, especially to directly send information about violating vehicles to the traffic police force to prevent violations by drivers.
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