The decision was announced at a Wednesday meeting with the attendance of representatives of the National Committee for Traffic Safety, the Department of Traffic Police, the Vietnam Automobile Transportation Association, and localities that the road runs through.

Speaking at the meeting, the Truong Son Consultancy Company said they had surveyed the number of vehicles running on the Cam Lo-La Son Expressway for three days from March 15-17.

"We found an average of 4,216 vehicles used the expressway daily, and nearly 50 percent of them were large-size passenger buses and trucks," Truong Son said. "Cam Lo-La Son Expressway has already been overloaded with this volume of traffic. Meanwhile, National Road 1 which runs parallel sees 17,278 vehicles daily, of which only 37 percent are large-size vehicles. National Road 1 can receive some 6,000 vehicles more daily."

Truong Son then proposed to ban passenger buses of over 30 seats and heavy trucks of over 30 tonnes from the Cam Lo-La Son Expressway to ease traffic volume. The vehicles would be diverted to National Road 1.

Head of the Vietnam Road Administration Nguyen Xuan Cuong said that they agreed with the proposal from Truong Son Company and asked concerned agencies to prepare for the new regulations.

The VND7.70 trillion Cam Lo- La Son Expressway spans over 98 kilometres of hilly terrain, connecting Thua Thien Hue and Quang Tri provinces.

Despite having many dangerous curves, the expressway has just two lanes of just 12 metres wide and a maximum speed limit of 60 kph.

Only some 15 km of the road has four lanes allowing a maximum speed of 80 kph.

The hilly terrain and narrow lanes have been highlighted as the main reasons for the large number of traffic accidents.

Despite a ban on overtaking on the two-lane overpass, violations still occur. The expressway still lacks surveillance cameras to monitor and penalise offending drivers.

Two people died and nine others suffered injuries after a passenger bus crashed into a truck on the Cam Lo-La Son Expressway on March 11.

Several deadly accidents have recently occurred on the road. Early this month, two people died and nine others suffered injuries after a passenger bus crashed into a truck here. On February 18, three people were also killed in an accident on the expressway.