TOEFL® essay: Road safety has become one of the nation’s most serious problems

[Jinnie]

Assignment: “ Road safety has become one of the nation’s most serious problems’’. What’s your opinion?

Today, road safety has become one of the nation’s most serious issues – it affects everyone whether he drives, walks or cycle.

Despite the success of an economy growing at more than 8 percent a year, Viet Nam’s infrastructure lags far behind and the road system is not an exception. Similarly, the millions of small, noisy motorbikes vrooming around city streets, often defying traffic laws, are symbols of the energy in the fast-emerging Southeast Asian market economy, but with severe costs in lives. According to the government, up to 13000 people are killed and more than 11000 are injured in traffic accidents every year. Seriously, half of all casualities are brain injuries and breadwinners of their families. So, besides the human suffering, road accidents also place a huge burden on the national economy. The Asian Development Bank estimates a staggering yearly economic loss of US$ 885 millions from road traffic crashes in Viet Nam. All these figures have really alarmed the government and everyone in VietNam.

Eventually, on December 15, wearing helmets became compulsory to motorcyclists and passengers. Consequently, they appear to comply with the new rule which give them no choice but to wear helmets to reduce the unacceptably high road traffic toll. Also, it raises citizens’ awareness about traffic laws as well as benefits of helmet use, which is undeniable. Probably, this is an extremely important milestone for road safety in VietNam. Furthermore, with the help of WHO and other non-government organizations, pulic education campaigns like “traffic blog” have been launched on such a large scale to keep people abreast of road safety.

To sum up, traffic is always a serious problem in VietNam particularly and all over the world generally. Nevertherless, all these problems can be kept under control by people’s responsibility and awareness to save their own lives or someone else’s.

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