The event, jointly held by the National Committee for Traffic Safety and the Hanoi People’s Committee was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh, who is also head of the committee, representatives from central agencies and Hanoi, and several popular artists.
The participants wore uniforms printed with the campaign’s logo and held banners that read “Drunk- Don't Drive”, “Young generation says no to alcohol,” among others.
The event aimed to raise public awareness on safe driving through the “Don’t drive after drinking” campaign after a recent series of serious alcohol-related traffic accidents, particularly the two that took place on April 22 and May 1 which took the lives of three people.
Speaking at the event, Deputy PM Truong Hoa Binh urged local people and international visitors not to drive after drinking.
The government will add stricter penalties to punish drivers whose alcohol concentration in blood or breath exceeds the permitted level, he noted.
The Deputy PM said that the death toll from traffic accidents in Vietnam decreased from nearly 12,000 in 2012 to over 8,000 last year. Traffic accidents, on average, still claim the lives of 21 people and injure 40 others each day.
According to Nguyen Quang Nhat, head of the traffic law dissemination division under the Ministry of Public Security’s Department of Traffic Police, in the first four months of 2019, nearly 50,000 cases of alcohol concentration violations were dealt with.
