Nails spread on national route frustrate drivers, authorities

09:02, 10/02/2017

The number of nails spread on the stretches of the National Route 51 passing through several communes in Dong Nai Province has increased recently, creating risk of traffic accidents and frustrating motorists and local authorities.  

 

The number of nails spread on the stretches of the National Route 51 passing through several communes in Dong Nai Province has increased recently, creating risk of traffic accidents and frustrating motorists and local authorities.  

People who travel on the stretches of the National Route 51 that across Tam Phuoc and Phuoc Tan communes in Bien Hoa City, and An Hoa Commune in Long Thanh District, have gotten used to seeing nails left on the roads by unidentified suspects since last June.

The number of nails increased recently around the time of the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday to an average of 1kg per day, an equivalent of hundreds of nails, according to Nguyen Huu Loi, member of a local group that volunteers to retrieve the nails.

“Every day some 20 people need to patch their tires flattened by the nails,” Loi told VOV on Wednesday. “We have patched 300-400 tires since we started.”

Nguyen Van Dau in Bien Hoa City always brings along a tire patch toolbox and a new tire so that he can patch his motorbike tires himself if he run over the nails. “It’s too dangerous and likely to cause accidents,” he said. “I had to change my tires every ten days.”

Nguyen Cao Cuong, chairman of the People’s Committee of Tam Phuoc Commune, said that even though local authorities and police have examined several nearby motorbike repair shops and lurked at night in hopes of catching the culprits, these measures have not yielded results.

“They move so carefully that we could not find out whether the repairmen and the nail-spreaders are one and the same,” he said. 

(Source:VNS)