The scene of an accident between a bus and a container truck in southern Binh Duong province on Dec. 26, injuring more than 20 people

The accidents also left 24,417 people injured in the year, a decrease of 17.2 percent against the 2013’s figure.

The numbers of death toll and accidents were also down by 4 percent and 13.8 percent, respectively, from last year.

In this December alone, 2,065 traffic accidents claimed 724 lives and injured 1,983 people.

Two most serious accidents occurred on December 16 in which five military doctors were killed after their vehicle plunged into a chasm in the central province of Quang Nam, and another six people lost their life when a passenger bus collided with a container truck in the northern province of Quang Ninh.

During the year, the traffic police dealt with more than 4.3 million traffic violations with total fines of 2.577 trillion VND.

According to the committee, 199,396 cars and 2,597,301 motorbikes were registered.

In waterway, the police also dealt with 18,450 violations and collected 10.6 billion VND in fines.

A three-month crackdown on traffic violations began in Hanoi on December 25 to deal with increasing traffic as Tet approaches.

"During the time before Tet, people tend to flow to the city centre for shopping, so traffic jams are unavoidable and the risk of accidents goes up," said Nguyen Van Quy, Lieutenant Colonel of Traffic Police Team 1. "The city's crackdown aims to ensure that traffic flows smoothly."