The Legacy of Green Spirit – Supporting a Local Family after a Traffic Accident

The danger of Vietnamese traffic is immediately apparent to everyone who visits its major cities. There are few enforced rules and regulations for the tens of millions of motorbike and car drivers who head out onto the roads of Vietnam every day; most simply operate under generally shared views on how traffic should work. Because of this, Vietnam’s traffic-related death rate per capita is amongst the worst in Asia and in February 2014, Đỗ Viết Hoa almost became another one of these statistics.

As part of a charity drive by V’Spirit Cruises, a member of Incredible Asia Journeys, our team, Green Spirit visited the home of Đỗ Viết Hoa and his wife, Ms. Le Thi Vui, who we had heard about in the local news. Ms. Vui was just 19 years old when we met her, but was married and had a 2 year-old son, with another one expected the following month. Her husband, lay largely unresponsive on the bed during our visit, the result of a traumatic brain injury that has almost claimed his life.

Two months prior to our arrival, Mr. Hoa had left the house on his motorbike, neglecting as so many do around Vietnam, to wear a helmet. Just 10 minutes later, Ms. Vui received a phone call from a stranger using her husband’s phone, informing her that he had been in a horrific accident that no one had seen, only heard.

In the difficult time since her husband’s hospitalisation, the very young Ms. Vui had been struggling to cope with raising a young baby on her own while expecting another one soon. Green Spirit made the visit to offer our support and gifts, to go some way to making this difficult time for Ms. Vui a little more bearable. We talked to her for many hours and she wanted to share the same message that we do, that road safety is incredibly important and failure to adhere to the rules can see your life changed in an instant. 

Around the family’s village of Hoai Duc, just 20km from Hanoi, young people driving fast without helmets is still as much of a problem as ever, with factors like alcohol and general lack of awareness affecting drivers and the drivers around them. The development of Vietnam happens at a local level; Green Spirit will continue to spread our message of safety.

Wearing helmet could be a small habit, but a big prompting to the mind about one self’s responsibility on both family and society.