Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reports that the black boxes, which record the location and speed of cars in which they are fitted, helped to track down more than 4,000 cars that were involved in traffic violations since the beginning of this year, according to figures from the Ministry of Transport’s Directorate for Roads of Vietnam.
The in-vehicle device helps to monitor the vehicle’s location, speed and acceleration, and is capable of transmitting that information to a central database.
Tens of thousands of drivers have been penalised since the devices were put into operation in 2014.
Vehicle owners who broke the law were ordered off the road for a month and had their licences revoked, or in cases involving commercial vehicles, had their business licences withdrawn.
Nguyen Trung Thong, a coach driver running the Hanoi-Hai Phong route, said drivers were encouraged to not violate traffic regulations since black boxes were installed on their vehicles.
Deputy Head of the Directorate for Roads of Vietnam’s Transport Department Do Cong Thuy said that to improve the efficiency of the black boxes, they have designed software to help transport departments at localities automatically total the number of vehicles breaking traffic laws.
The software installed at transport departments will automatically total the number of violators every six months and update a list of violators for leaders of transport departments to mete out punishment.
The Directorate for Roads of Vietnam reported that black boxes were installed in 136,000 vehicles nationwide and the figure is expected to reach one million by 2017.