National traffic safety 

National Traffic Safety Committee is an organization with the task of: “Searching and  directing rescue and overcoming consequences of particularly serious traffic accidents on expressways, national railways and national internal waterways”; “Timely propose measures to prevent accidents” and “Identify the causes of the accident situation…”. Deputy Prime Minister is concurrently the Chairman of this Committee, together with a specialized Vice Chairman. It shows that the government is very concerned about traffic safety. 

Some other specific fields such as radiation, oil and gas exploration and production, units of the people’s armed forces, and occupational safety are also performed by a specialized agency of the industry (Article 21, Decree 39/2016/ND-CP guiding the Law on Occupational Safety and Health). 

Compared to the above industries, elevators are not considered a specific area – although this is also a means of transport (vertical), with a carrying capacity that is said to be the largest in the world if measured by number of passenger, has high requirements on health, life and property safety for users and technical service providers. 

According to current law, when an occupational accident causes minor injury or serious injury to 01 employee, the responsibility for investigation belongs to the grassroots investigation team established by the employer; In more serious cases, a provincial investigation team will be established at the request of the Chief Inspector of the local Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. In particularly serious cases, the central occupational accident investigation team will be established under the decision of the Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs. The accident investigation teams are responsible for investigating the causes, remediating the consequences and making analysis reports to specialized agencies and higher management agencies to learn from experience, hold responsible and take appropriate action to prevent similar incidents. 

Elevator industry also applies the above regulation, in which labor owners are usually businesses that provide elevator technical services. That is for the case of an accident that happens to an employee, and in the case where the subject of the accident is an elevator user, the investigation shall be carried out by the police agency to investigate civil or criminal liability (if any). Pure investigation of vehicle engineering and operating procedures is the responsibility of elevator owners and engineering service providers. 

Regulations are adequate, but how is enforcement? The declaration of incidents, elevator accidents, of course, comes from the labor scene. However, what if the accident is not reported? With the “closed door” mentality, only serious cases, involving many people, or cannot be hidden, or when there is an internal denunciation, many things will come to light. 

Most people and businesses are afraid to have conflict, afraid of legal issues, so they should solve it themselves. They do not know that the silence that allows these events to pass is the silence that allows similar unfortunate events to happen in the future with unpredictable consequences. 

Experience from the world 

South Korea, which used about 600,000 elevators in 2016, decided to set up a national agency dedicated to elevator safety after the country had ONE serious elevator accident. They found that the current way of organization is very difficult to control elevator safety. 

Korea Elevator Safety Agency (KoELSA) has adopted clear criteria for the level of elevator accident and damage (legalized) to its management. Not only is it required to report serious accidents, but also cases of severe elevator damage are required to be investigated and reported. It is from the cause of these serious incidents that evaluation analyzes are carried out not only to correct similar problems for existing elevators, but also to include them in a national program to improve existing elevator/in production. 

In the process of exchanging and cooperating with the Vietnam Elevator Association, in addition to sharing management experience, safety technology or trade promotion, KoELSA also wants the two sides to have access to serious elevator problems or elevator accidents in each country. Perhaps, they also want to know the causes of incidents for further improvements in production design and operating procedures, towards safer products and user safety. 

Russia is facing a situation where about 25% of elevators are over 25 years old (out of a total of about 530,000 elevators). According to statistics in recent years in this country, the number of fatal accidents tends to increase, peaking in 2018 with 21 fatal accidents. This forced the government to hand over the elevator safety management function to Ros-tech-nadzor – the All-Russian Technical Supervision Agency and the situation improved. However, when Ros-tech-nadzor was stripped of control of the elevator from July 2021, the situation worsened, forcing the State Duma (lower house of the Russian Federation Parliament) to pass a bill returning the right control for this specialized agency from March 2023. 

It’s time to “unveil” 

Vietnam is using about 400,000 elevators in the past 20 years. Elevator starts to deteriorate, the age is high (over 10 years), the recent serious damage is reported by the people or the unsafe accidents ranging from injuries to major fatal accidents is an alarm bell about the level of danger in elevator safety. 

Without professional inspection tools or a mechanism to monitor safe operation involving both users and personnel working in the elevator sector, the business and the relevant regulatory body, it is very difficult to access and investigate, analyze and find clear causes of elevator accidents and incidents. 

This not only affects the legitimate rights and interests of those involved but more importantly, the remediation and prevention of risks. Only when clarifying the cause of all incidents can we find out where the problem lies in the stages of design, production, installation, maintenance, management, use, etc. From there, there is a solution, effective method for safe operation of elevators. 

Must start from the cause of the accident, uncover the “darkness” and thoroughly solve the problem. Perhaps the elevator industry also needs a specialized agency with sufficient authority to control the general situation, and individuals and organizations involved in the use of elevators also need to be more proactive and transparent – ​​not only for individuals but also for the safety of society as a whole.