Driving

Over the last few years, the number of vehicles on Lao’s roads has increased enormously. Although this is a welcome sign of an increasingly improved standard of living, it nonetheless has some unfortunate and undesirable consequences. In different cities all over the country, not only has traffic become a nuisance in terms of noise, pollution and sometimes congested streets, but the number of road accidents has also increased dramatically.

 

 

 

In Laos, road accidents cause deaths almost every day.

It appears, however, that the seriousness of this situation remains largely ignored or unknown to the majority of the population.

Indeed, the most elementary security measures are ignored by most people and there is no simple explanation for this.
A large number of motorcycle riders do not wear helmets, very few car drivers wear their seatbelts, and, whether they are in a car or on a motorbike, it is not uncommon to see people chatting on a phone while driving…

This lack of respect for even the most basic rules of road safety is widespread among road users. Right-of-way is normally assumed by the largest vehicle with little regard for the actual traffic rules. As a matter of fact, few vehicles actually stop at the stop-signs, traffic lights seem to have become “optional” and one-way streets are a mere technically to be negotiated…

What to make of this behavior? For some it is simple carelessness, to others pure rudeness or even aggressiveness.

But are those attitudes simply due to ignorance?

Ignorance of basic road user rules is one aspect of the problem. But more importantly is the ignorance and the incapacity to grasp things as they are, to correctly perceive the everyday common situation.
 
Ignorance and inability to understand cause-and-effect relationships
For some, this is what may cause bad driving with little regard for the harmful consequences it may have for ourselves or others around us.

This situation is not only specific to Laos. In many countries all over the world, like a pandemic, road accidents cause more and more victims everyday.

The aim of this photographic work is to inform and give the viewer a scope of the current situation in Laos. For that, thanks to a set of 3 photos, each scene tells us a short story. The pictures show us a succession of different events in order to highlight the cause-and-effect relationships.

Of course, these stories are reconstructions. But, they are based on testimonies recounted by road accident victims or their families.  Moreover, because those photos were taken in different hospitals in Vientiane, the suffering they depict, however, is real.