ĐỒNG NAI — The number of nails spread on the stretches of the National Route 51 passing through several communes in Đồng Nai Province has increased recently, creating risk of traffic accidents and frustrating motorists and local authorities.  

People who travel on the stretches of the National Route 51 that across Tam Phước and Phước Tân communes in Biên Hòa City, and An Hòa Commune in Long Thành District, have gotten used to seeing nails left on the roads by unidentified suspects since last June.

The number of nails increased recently around the time of the Tết (Lunar New Year) holiday to an average of 1kg per day, an equivalent of hundreds of nails, according to Nguyễn Hữu Lợi, member of a local group that volunteers to retrieve the nails.

“Every day some 20 people need to patch their tires flattened by the nails,” Lợi told VOV on Wednesday. “We have patched 300-400 tires since we started.”

Nguyễn Văn Dậu in Biên Hòa City always brings along a tire patch toolbox and a new tire so that he can patch his motorbike tires himself if he run over the nails. “It’s too dangerous and likely to cause accidents,” he said. “I had to change my tires every ten days.”

Nguyễn Cao Cường, chairman of the People’s Committee of Tam Phước Commune, said that even though local authorities and police have examined several nearby motorbike repair shops and lurked at night in hopes of catching the culprits, these measures have not yielded results.

“They move so carefully that we could not find out whether the repairmen and the nail-spreaders are one and the same,” he said. — VNS