On the tarmac of a dark Hanoi street, motorbike taxi driver Pham Quoc Viet mops the bloodied knee of a fellow rider, one of the hundreds of traffic victims he has tended to in the chaotically congested Vietnamese capital.
By day, Pham, 33, works for Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab, scooting along the tree-lined boulevards and winding alleys of the city, but from 9:30pm to 1:30am, he is an unofficial emergency responder, a red flashing light secured to his handlebars as he patrols the streets on two wheels.
“When I first came to Hanoi to work, I thought about what I could do to help those I saw injured in accidents,” said Pham, who moved to the city in 2017.
Photo: AFP
The year before, he had been involved in a serious motorbike crash that saw him sprawled on the roadside, glimpsing passersby too afraid to come to his aid.
“I remember that desperate feeling when someone walks on by... I didn’t want anyone else to get into the same situation and feel abandoned,” he said.
There are 6 million motorbikes in Hanoi, their dominance and numbers so great that pedestrians struggle to cross roads and minor scrapes are an everyday hazard. Although more serious accidents are now relatively rare in the capital, victims often face a challenging wait for help, as congestion blocks the path of medics and fear of litigation prevents onlookers from offering a hand.
After starting his rescue work alone, Pham now has a team of close to 50 volunteers, most of whom work in Hanoi.
Two-thirds are ride-hailing drivers, but there are also engineers, mechanics and students who form a network of eyes on the ground and social media. Many of the team have been trained in first aid, largely by Pham at weekly sessions, and they keep each other up to date via Vietnamese messaging app Zalo.
Nguyen Le Giang, 34, who worked in a textile workshop before starting as a Grab bike driver three years ago, pushed her husband and mother to help around the house and with caring for her two children so she could join the nightly patrol.
“The first time I gave first aid I was a bit scared,” she said. “The man told me his foot was painful, but there was no blood and the bone wasn’t broken. He could not stand up or walk, though.”
“I hadn’t seen anything like that before so I had to make a video call to Viet,” she said.
Pham and his team are currently helping about 100 people a month, with each member spending up to US$2 daily on equipment such as bandages, usually about a 10th of their income.
Although Hanoi’s streets are once again bustling after a weeks-long social isolation order was lifted at the end of last month, ride-hailing drivers suffered considerably during the pandemic.
“We earned much less money... It was very difficult, but all of us have overcome it,” Pham said, adding that most continued to patrol and buy supplies, despite their reduced income.
And there was no discrimination when it came to who they treated.
“Some members asked me: ‘If the injured are not motorbike taxi drivers, why should we care about them?’ I told them: ‘Imagine those people were your relatives, your friends, would you still say that?’” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in