I bet most readers were thinking that in S.E. Asia the serious fatal road accidents with brake failure being the cause and the driver running away were pretty much exclusive to Thailand. Not so. Vietnam is right up there with the worst. Brake failure and fleeing the scene seems to be a widespread. However there is nothing more certain than the guilty party in Vietnam will get dealt with far more harshly than those in Thailand. This was once a 7 seater car. Another asleep at the wheel story in the staggering number of road tragedies of Asia.

http://vietnamnews.vn/society/271118/5-killed-in-traffic-accident-in-citys-thu-duc-district.html

A neighbour popped in the other day carrying her 8 month old son. Upon hearing that they had brought a new car and having recently seen a toddler dangerously loose in the back seat of another car while out and about I rammed home the 'crash test dummy' routine & backed it up with some slow motion videos from youtube on a full sized telly.....

"Thin(k) too mutt!"

I gave up. Thankfully my wife & children have long since realized that belting up/child seats make sense.

Its down to bad driving . poor tests, to get your licence and No policing and of course Education .but some times you cannot put brains where there are none.

On a visit to HCMC took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels, where a minivan picks you up at your hotel, fills it up with other tourists, and you're off.

On the way there our guide kept us entertained with stories, one of which was what it takes to get a drivers license in VN. He explained it is much easier to pay for a fake license, which is what most people do. He told us his own license was a fake, passed it around to show us. I didn't ask if the driver's was fake as well.

What surprises me is how few accidents on the scale of the OP there are.

Moved to Motoring