2006年VOA标准英语-Computer Guru's Accident Highlights Vietnam's T

By Matt Steinglass
Hanoi
14 December 2006

Seymour Papert (File)

A renowned¹ professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States has been in a coma² in a Hanoi hospital since December 5, after being struck by a motorbike. Seymour Papert is a computer education pioneer who was working on a computer model of Hanoi traffic before the accident. The tragedy has brought attention to the high death tolls³ on Vietnam's roads. In Hanoi, Matt Steinglass has more.

The 78-year-old Papert was in Hanoi for a conference on computers and education.

While crossing a six-lane road between his hotel and the National University of Technology, Papert was struck by a speeding motorbike.

Papert's former student, Northwestern University professor Uri Wilensky, was walking beside him when the accident occurred. The two had been discussing how to construct a computer model of Hanoi's notoriously chaotic⁴ traffic.

"What we were trying to do was see if we could come up with some rules that would generate the patterns that we saw in Hanoi," he said. "We were thinking that it would be a fun demo to do at the end of the conference, because everybody was sort of so nervous about the traffic."

Traffic in Hanoi is dominated by swarms⁵ of motorbikes, which often ignore lanes and traffic signals. The accident rate throughout Vietnam is high, and rising. In the first nine months of this year, 9,400 Vietnamese died in accidents - up eight percent over last year.

The issue has featured in the local press, particularly since a Vietnamese Engineering professor died after being hit by a motorbike in Hanoi last week.

Vietnam's minister of transportation, Ho Nghia Dung, expresses his regrets about the traffic dangers.

Dung says the accidents pain him, and should send an alarm to all related agencies and to every community.

Dung said the government would establish safety lanes to try to tackle the chaos⁶.

Le Sy Hoang works for Asia Injury, an organization that tries to persuade Vietnamese to follow traffic rules and wear motorcycle helmets. She says the situation is getting worse.

"You see the accident rate is increasing, and it seems that drunk driving and running the red light happens all the time, without the enforcement of the police," she said. "The doctor who is in charge of head injury in Viet Duc Hospital, it seems they should be most aware of the problem, but still, it seems that 90 percent of the [doctors] there do not wear a helmet."

Papert is also the inventor of a programming language called Logo, which is often used to model unpredictable group behaviors, like swarming⁷ bees - or Hanoi traffic. Wilensky says Papert was fascinated by Hanoi's traffic in part because it seemed to obey so few laws.

"Hanoi is one of the first places I have ever been, Delhi to some extent but Hanoi even more so, where it really is more organic. It is not controlled so much from the outside. It really is more like a herd⁸ of buffalo," he said.

Wilensky, who is staying in Hanoi to help care for Papert, says the minister of education and senior officials from the Transportation Department have visited him in recent days to express their regrets.

Wilensky says he told the officials that if any good could come out of Papert's accident, it would be that they begin to really pay attention to the chaos on the roads, because the traffic is "really crazy and out of control".

1 renowned   

adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的

参考例句：

• He is one of the world's renowned writers.他是世界上知名的作家之一。
• She is renowned for her advocacy of human rights.她以提倡人权而闻名。

2 coma   

n.昏迷，昏迷状态

参考例句：

• The patient rallied from the coma.病人从昏迷中苏醒过来。
• She went into a coma after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills.她吃了一整瓶安眠药后就昏迷过去了。

3 tolls   

（缓慢而有规律的）钟声( toll的名词复数 )； 通行费； 损耗； （战争、灾难等造成的）毁坏

参考例句：

• A man collected tolls at the gateway. 一个人在大门口收通行费。
• The long-distance call tolls amount to quite a sum. 长途电话费数目相当可观。

4 chaotic   

adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的

参考例句：

• Things have been getting chaotic in the office recently.最近办公室的情况越来越乱了。
• The traffic in the city was chaotic.这城市的交通糟透了。

5 swarms   

蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They came to town in swarms. 他们蜂拥来到城里。
• On June the first there were swarms of children playing in the park. 6月1日那一天，这个公园里有一群群的孩子玩耍。

6 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

7 swarming   

密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去

参考例句：

• The sacks of rice were swarming with bugs. 一袋袋的米里长满了虫子。
• The beach is swarming with bathers. 海滩满是海水浴的人。

8 herd   

n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• He had no opinions of his own but simply follow the herd.他从无主见，只是人云亦云。