Mopeds in Saigon

Crossing the street in Saigon is a little like playing Frogger. You look for a break in traffic, and time your approach. You take a few steps forward, maybe a step back, and the occasional step to the side. And eventually you get hit by a moped. Game over.

I can’t properly describe the chaos of moped traffic in Saigon. I have a hard enough time understanding it while I’m watching it. It’s definitely something to see. Mopeds are everywhere in Saigon. It’s like Bike Week in Daytona, Sturgis, and Rolling Thunder, all rolled into one, with about 99% less misplaced testosterone (these are mopeds, after all). When I say that it’s a sea of mopeds, it really is.

Apparently insurance is not required to drive, so the vast majority of drivers don’t have it. One the one hand, that could be really bad if someone got hurt, but I think it also makes them a little more cautious, since they’d have to pay out of pocket if something were to happen. It doesn’t stop them from driving according to their own set of rules.

That’s a lot of mopeds. My phone camera couldn’t get them all into a single frame, though.

More mopeds. They kept driving by for a few minutes nonstop.

• Mopeds will drive the wrong way down a one way street. They’ll stay to the side, but they’ll do it anyway. I saw a moped go the wrong way down an on-ramp this morning, but by the time I got my camera out, he was gone.
• Mopeds will drive the wrong way on the opposite shoulder of the road.
• Mopeds will drive on the sidewalk in any direction. If the rider is trying to turn right at an intersection and traffic is stopped, they’ll hop the curb and drive down the sidewalk to get around it. Or they’ll just drive down the sidewalk for a block or more, just to get ahead of traffic.
• If you, as a pedestrian, have a walk sign to cross an intersection, mopeds will still come cruising through without slowing down.
• I saw a moped drive out of a store the other day. It wasn’t a moped dealership, with a new owner taking his bike out onto the road for the first time. This was a women’s clothing store that he had drove into for some reason. The other side of the store opened into an alley, so I wonder if he used the store as a shortcut to the main street?
• One afternoon, I stood at a corner and waited for the crossing light. When it turned green, I looked both ways, and I even looked at the other traffic to make sure I was mostly clear. As I started to cross the street, I almost got hit by a moped driving up the sidewalk behind me.

More mopeds. Yes, that’s my finger in the corner. But if you want to hop off your moped and buy vegetables from the sidewalk, that’s an option. (on the left of the frame)

This doesn’t really have much to do with traffic, I just like the fact that you can get a haircut on the sidwalk. There’s no barbershop nearby or anything. Just a dude with a chair, a mirror on the wall, and his clippers.

So, with all of that chaos, what can you do?

• I’ve learned not to make eye contact with the riders. It’s unnerving, but if you have the right of way, you pretty much need to start walking. They’ll flow around you like a school of fish (it’s actually pretty cool to see). But if you look at them, they assume that you’ll yield to them and drive accordingly.
• When crossing the street, maintain a steady pace and a steady direction. I got hit twice by mopeds. Once I sped up to try to get out of the way of one moped and got clipped by another rider. The other time, I turned to go in a slightly different direction (I think I was trying to avoid a large puddle) and got clipped. Both were just shoulder bumps, so no damage done, but it’s still strange to get hit by a vehicle.
• Mopeds will go around you. Cars and buses won’t. You should definitely yield the right of way to them.
• If you’re having trouble crossing the street, find an old Vietnamese person and wait until they cross. Vietnamese people are very respectful of their elders and they are much less likely to hit them. It’s like the opposite of the Boy Scouts. Instead of helping the elderly across the street, I’m using them to get myself to the other side. I’m not proud of it, but I’m still standing, so I’m calling it a win.

This is an intersection near the Ben Thanh market. No lines on the road, no signs on the side of the road, no street lights, no policemen directing traffic. Just chaos.

You can see two riders driving on the sidewalk, including one with his small child in front of him. Dad’s got a helmet, but not the kid.

Here you can see 4 mopeds trying to go the wrong way down a road. After I took this pic, they turned perpendicular to traffic and went across. Amazingly, none of them got hit.

Need to go somewhere? Call Uber.

After watching these drivers, I have to admit that I am very impressed with their skill. The moped traffic flows almost like a living creature, moving according to its own rules. Given what I’ve seen, I think that, if I needed to get to a hospital, I’d want one of these guys to take me. A moped wold beat an ambulance with no problem. And if I have to go to a hospital in Vietnam, it’s likely to be because I got hit by a moped in the first place, so there’s a certain poetry to riding there on one. As long as I don’t have to cross any streets when I get there.