Horns, Lanes and Flashing Lights in Hanoi: What Official and Manufacturer Pages Say About Signalling

Hanoi traffic etiquette around the motorbike horn, lanes and flashed lights is described in only a few pages. This article gathers them: Hanoi City’s legal-information portal on the rules in force from 1 January 2025, two Vietnam Traffic Police Department pages from 2015 and 2020, a Honda Vietnam safe-riding booklet, Hanoi’s city newspaper, and Canadian and UK travel advice. Habits are reported only where a page describes them, with its date. No page tells a visitor which habits to copy, and only the UK advice mentions hiring a motorbike.

What Hanoi’s legal portal says the horn is for

A page on the Hanoi City legal-information portal, posted 17 August 2024, summarises Article 21 of the Road Traffic Order and Safety Law, in force from 1 January 2025. It says the horn may be used in two cases only: to warn other road users when a situation that could be unsafe appears, and to signal preparation to overtake. It adds that the horn must not sound continuously, must not have a volume outside the rules, and must not be used between 22:00 and 05:00 in densely populated areas or around medical facilities, with an exception for priority vehicles.

How the pages describe horn use in practice

The Traffic Police Department’s web page of 30 March 2020, a signed commentary, calls the horn mandatory equipment meant to draw attention when warning of danger or simply to give a signal. It says Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City residents face noise pollution as well as air pollution, that at peak hours indiscriminate horn use occurs on nearly all busy streets, and that on some low-traffic stretches people still keep the habit of honking. A caption on the same page says some roads have no-horn signs that few seem to notice.

Hà Nội Mới, the city newspaper (17 December 2016), describes riders and drivers behind urging the vehicle ahead with loud horns when the red light has a few seconds left, under a heading about a habit of using a loud horn to be let past (còi to cho vượt). It relays one explanation, that on narrow, chaotic roads riding without the horn would feel too dangerous, and says the horn is a signal to use at the right time and place at a suitable volume. It reports Hanoi’s traffic police as saying that fining horn offences is not easy.

Flashing headlights and the low beam

The Traffic Police Department’s page of 11 November 2015 says that in some countries a headlight flash means the flasher is giving way, but that in Vietnam it is the opposite. It gives two reasons: no driving school teaches giving way, or asking to give way, with headlights, and traffic runs on a “mạnh ai nấy đi” (“every man for himself”) spirit. The page says the Vietnamese convention can be understood as asking to go first, so a vehicle flashing continuously wants to pass first. Where both vehicles flash, it says the driver should decide whether to go or yield. The same page says horn use was regarded as inevitable and that, in the traffic of 2015, asking to overtake was hard without it.

On dipping the beam, the Hanoi portal’s summary of Article 20 (posted 17 August 2024) says front lights must be on from 18:00 to 06:00 or when fog, smoke, dust, rain or bad weather limits visibility. It says drivers must switch from high to low beam when meeting pedestrians crossing the road, on stretches through densely populated areas with working street lighting, when meeting an oncoming vehicle (unless the median is anti-glare), and when turning at an intersection. Honda Vietnam’s booklet gives a similar night-riding point, low beam when vehicles or pedestrians approach or in urban areas, and says to combine horn and lights when entering a bend to warn oncoming traffic.

Lanes and overtaking

Honda Vietnam’s booklet sets out overtaking as a sequence: hold a steady speed behind the vehicle, check ahead, check behind in the mirror and over the shoulder, signal left (a request to overtake) and move left gradually, check again once the vehicle ahead has given way, accelerate while keeping 2 m of sideways space, sound the horn during the overtake so the other vehicle knows, then signal and return right gradually without cutting across its front. It adds that one should overtake only when conditions are safe. For intersections it says to decide the direction early, signal, slow down, move gradually into the lane that suits the direction, and give way to pedestrians and to traffic from other directions.

The Government of Canada’s advice (last updated 19 October 2026) says road safety is poor across Vietnam, traffic laws are not consistently respected, and some vehicles, especially motorcycles, drive against the flow of traffic or on sidewalks. Among its tips for those who choose to drive, it lists avoiding driving a motorcycle. The UK government says motorbike travel in Vietnam is much riskier than in the UK and compliance with road laws is poor, and it advises keeping speed down, staying alert and not hiring a motorbike without experience. For related reading, a page titled How Vietnam’s Driving Licence Points System Works: 12 Points, Deductions and Recovery for Motorbike Riders covers points for motorbike riders, and another is titled Motorbike Rental Hanoi: How to Choose the Right Bike.

Signals side by side

Where the pages differ

The Hanoi portal limits the horn to warning of an unsafe situation and signalling an overtake, while the 2020 and 2016 texts describe it sounded for other reasons, such as urging the vehicle ahead at a red light. The 2015 police page reads a headlight flash as asking to go first, while the Hanoi lights page covers when lights must be on and when to dip the beam, and does not mention flashing. The lights hours also differ: the Hanoi page notes that the 2008 law set 19:00 to 05:00 in normal weather, against 18:00 to 06:00 in the 2025 rule. The 2015 and 2020 police pages were written before the 2025 law, and the 2020 page cites Article 8 of the Road Traffic Law and a 2019 decree, so their rule statements are not read here as current. On a different topic, a separate page is titled Rental Motorbike Puncture in Hanoi: Where to Stop and What to Record.

What the pages leave out

No page counts or surveys how Hanoi riders use horns, lanes or lights; the habits above come from three dated texts (2015, 2016, 2020). None says what a flashed headlight means to a Hanoi rider today, how long or loud a horn should be, or how to share a lane, and none discusses lane filtering. No page tells a visitor which habit to copy, and the only mentions of hiring a motorbike are in the UK advice (not to hire one without experience, and to rent from a reputable organisation). Whether the horn rule is enforced today is not covered; the 2020 page and the 2016 article both call enforcement difficult. The Hanoi lights page addresses drivers (người lái xe) and operators of special-purpose machinery and does not name motorbikes in its rule text. The Canadian road text does not name Hanoi, and the UK page and the Honda booklet carry no date in the extracted text.

Sources checked

• Hanoi portal: horn rule from 2025 (17 August 2024)
• Hanoi portal: lights rule from 2025 (17 August 2024)
• Traffic Police Department: using the horn (30 March 2020)
• Traffic Police Department: using the headlight (11 November 2015)
• Honda Vietnam: safe-riding booklet
• Government of Canada: Vietnam travel advice (19 October 2026)
• UK government: Vietnam safety and security
• Hà Nội Mới: horn culture article (17 December 2016)

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