And while you sleep, unless your villa or apartment building happens to include a driveway. By 2000, they estimate, the city will require 1.5 million square meters of parking space. Edgar Chiongbian, director of BMW's operations in Vietnam, theorizes that this matter should be taken up by Vietnamese architects and urban planners. Overnight, you'd have a scenario where you could park your car and go home. Almost no Vietnamese houses have garages.
Some automakers suggest that more cars means fewer accidents.
Cars, the argument goes, displace other more dangerous forms of transportation like bicycles and motorcycles. And you don't need a helmet to keep your skull intact. Yet a spin on city streets challenges those arguments, at least for the short term. One executive, in Vietnam to market one of the world's most well-engineered luxury automobiles, owns one himself but doesn't dare drive it on the streets of Hanoi. Kraft notes for the reporters that fewer than 3 per cent of Vietnamese motor cycle or motor scooter riders use helmets.