Ever since the installation of speed camera infringements on highways, national roads, and provincial roads has become widespread, many vehicle owners have been committing offenses such as speeding, lane infringement, and running red lights without permission… But they don’t know.
Fines adding up to hundreds of millions of VND
Two weeks before the Lunar New Year, the owner of a 2019 Kia Sedona visited several used car dealerships in Ho Chi Minh City to sell the car for only 300 million VND, but no one dared to buy it. The price of this car when new was 1.4 billion VND, and after a few years, it can still be resold for about 700 – 800 million VND, depending on the actual usage. The reason why no dealership dares to purchase this extremely cheap car is because the owner has accumulated many severe traffic violation fines totaling… 490 million VND.
Many vehicle owners only find out that they have been fined for traffic violations when they have their vehicles inspected
“With this amount of fine, the vehicle owner could have committed dozens of violations. Even if you reduce the purchase price to the lowest level and accept to go through the process of paying the fine as the new owner and then resell it at a slightly higher price, it still takes a lot of effort and time, maybe even a whole year to complete” – the owner of a used car dealership calculated.
Mr. Ta Cong Tien, owner of My Style Car Market (Ho Chi Minh City), said that almost every used car dealership is struggling with the purchase of vehicles with hidden fines that even the current owner does not know about. If the owner is fined in Ho Chi Minh City, the dealership can easily go through the process of paying the fine, but if the violation occurs in a different province or city, it not only takes time and effort but also increases the expenses for transportation and accommodation to handle the traffic violation.
“Each car has at least 1 – 2 violations, and some have 4 – 5 or more violations. With an average fine of about 5 million VND per violation, if you buy a car with 4 or more violations, the dealership will definitely incur a loss because we can only make a profit of about 10 million VND per car” – Mr. Tien said.
According to the reporter’s research, if a car is fined in a different locality, the owner or the authorized person must bring the vehicle registration documents and driver’s license to that locality to complete the process of creating a violation record. About 1 – 2 days later, the owner will receive the decision to fine the specific traffic violation and must go to the State Treasury to pay the fine. After that, the owner has to wait for the Traffic Police Agency to erase the violation record before the vehicle can be inspected.
Risks when renting cars
Self-driving car rental apps also face difficulties when customers rent cars and then get fined for traffic violations in a different locality, requiring a lot of time to resolve the issue and even suffering significant losses.
Mr. Nguyen Van Long, Director of Sigo Vietnam Co., Ltd., said that there have been many cases of self-driving car rentals that have violated traffic laws and been fined. Recently, a foreign customer rented a self-driving car for 11 million VND to travel from Ho Chi Minh City to Binh Thuan. After returning the car, the company received 3 notices of traffic violation fines with a total amount of nearly 10 million VND.
To limit financial loss due to traffic violation fines, self-driving car rental apps have required customers to deposit 5 – 10 million VND in advance. This amount is kept by the app for 7 – 30 days as a “safety buffer” for any traffic violations. There are also cases where rental apps have just refunded the money to the customer and immediately received information about traffic violation fines. At that time, the app couldn’t contact the customer and there are no regulations requiring the customer to take responsibility for this violation.
“Many cases where a car is fined for violations are not notified to us until 3 – 6 months later, so we can’t ask the customer to pay the fine” – said the owner of a self-driving car rental app.
According to regulations, the person operating the vehicle is responsible for traffic violations. However, with the form of traffic violation fines, the camera only captures the license plate of the offending vehicle, so the owner must bear the responsibility for paying the fine. Many people have lent their cars to friends or family members, only to later cry because the vehicle was fined for traffic violations.
It is worth noting that recently, there has been a service to rent driver’s licenses for 1.5 – 3 million VND per month or 300,000 – 500,000 VND per day to complete the process of paying traffic violation fines.
