German company Bosch and the Standing Office of National Traffic Safety Committee September 20 signed a memorandum of understanding for co-operation in traffic and vehicle-safety research.

Under the agreement, the two sides will make efforts to strengthen co-operation between Vietnamese agencies and Bosch’s business partners to improve traffic safety through regulation, education, studies and technology.

They will organise workshops, seminars and academic conferences to share and discuss data, statistics, analysis of traffic accidents and lessons learnt in traffic management for research purposes to improve traffic safety.

They will assist with the process of drafting regulations and standards for vehicle safety, educating the public in traffic safety to promote safe driving and collecting, analysing and reporting data and make recommendations to relevant agencies to improve traffic safety.

Khuat Viet Hung, deputy chairman of the National Traffic Safety Committee, said more than 5,400 people were killed and 10,543 others injured in 12,775 traffic accidents in the first eight months of this year.

They represented declines of 5.5 per cent, 10.7 per cent, and 6.3 per cent year-on-year, he said.

But this downward trend is not sustainable without more collaborative efforts by various sectors, he said.

Guru Mallikarjuna, managing director of Bosch Vietnam, said: "Traffic safety is an inescapable concern for everyone. Reducing road traffic accidents and improving traffic safety require multi-sectoral cooperation among the Government, academia, organisations, businesses, and the public.

“We believe that the most substantial impact the automotive industry can make is to produce safer vehicle technologies that save lives.”

His company has tied up with various organisations to conduct accident research in many countries around the world, and the accident data is analysed to understand major contributing factors and find solutions, he added. — VNS