More than 40,500 fined for drunk driving during run-up to Tet

At 1 p.m. on Wednesday, four officers from the Hanoi Police’s Traffic Police Team No. 6 set up a checkpoint at Tran Thai Tong Street, Cau Giay District.

One of the officers, in civilian clothes, was stationed in an area with many pubs 500 m from the checkpoint with a walkie-talkie to notify the checkpoint when someone left the pub.

The police stopped a motorbike rider with what looked like an alcohol flush reaction to test his breath. The 62-year-old man had 0.18 mg of alcohol per liter of blood.

“I live in My Dinh, which is just over a kilometer from the pub, so I thought drinking only two beers at my company’s year-end party was safe enough,” he explained.

In less than an hour the officers found four DUI violations. Motorcyclists face fines starting at VND2 million and can have their driving licenses revoked for 10-12 months and their vehicle seized for at least one day.

A police officer tests a car driver for alcohol in Hanoi on January 17, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Gia Chinh

Colonel Pham Quang Huy, deputy director of the Traffic Police Department at the Ministry of Public Security said there have recently been a number of serious traffic accidents in the country because of drunk driving.

To prevent this, his department has tightened scrutiny of roads, trains and waterways between November 15 and February 5.

Various police departments set up checkpoints on roads and organize mobile patrols and focus on people driving while intoxicated, speeding and overloading cargo and passenger vehicles.

They have caught more than 521,000 violations and collected fines of nearly VND1 trillion.

Since December 15, when the year-end party season began, there have been 40,590.

Motorbike riders were the biggest violators during the two months, but 3,600 cars, 290 trucks, 49 buses, and 34 container trucks also copped penalties.

Anyone driving with alcohol present in their body would face either fines or criminal charges in accordance with Vietnamese law.