This footage of a bustling intersection comes from Vietnam, not Kenya

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 19, 2020 at 14:25
3 min read
By Mary KULUNDU, AFP Kenya

A video showing motorbikes and vehicles zipping across a busy intersection has been viewed thousands of times on Facebook with the claim that it depicts Kisii, a town in Kenya. The claim is false; the footage, which has been sped up, was actually filmed in a Vietnamese city.

“If you have not been to kisii town this is what you are missing,” reads a Facebook post shared more than 1,000 times since September 5, 2020.

Kisii is a town located in south-western Kenya.

A screenshot of the false Facebook post, taken on November 4, 2020

The video is 38 seconds long and shows a busy street scene from overhead, with dozens of motorcycles and cars appearing to drive chaotically across a large intersection.

Junction is in Vietnam’s largest city

Using the video verification tool InVID WeVerify, AFP Fact Check ran a reverse image search on multiple frames of the video and located the clip in YouTube videos here, here and here, which are described as showing traffic in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh city. These videos show traffic moving at a normal speed, as opposed to the sped-up Facebook clip.

A search with the keywords “motorcycle traffic in Vietnam” on Google turned up a similar video which is much clearer and also filmed from the same elevated angle. Visual cues like a petrol station, buildings and an electrical post are evident in both versions of the video.

A screenshot comparing visual cues between two versions of the video, taken on November 18, 2020

One of the standout features in both videos is a petrol station in the top right with blue and yellow corporate colours. A search of petrol stations in Vietnam revealed that Petrolimex, Vietnam’s liquefied petroleum gas state company, has the exact features.

On Google Maps, we examined the different locations of Petrolimex in Vietnam and spotted this one which resembles the petrol station in the videos and is found on Trần Hưng Đạo street.

Meanwhile, another video shows the same junction where Trần Hưng Đạo street crosses Nguyễn Văn Cừ street. Evident is a branch of Sacombank, a bank in Vietnam with blue and white branding and below it a restaurant called Jollibee. Both are situated opposite the petrol station and can be seen on Google Maps.

Google Street View also reveals that the junction is controlled by traffic lights, meaning the traffic flow is controlled, contrary to the disorderly scene the video on Facebook appears to show because it has been manipulated to increase the speed. This video also shows the same.

A screenshot of Google street view showing traffic lights at a junction in a Vietnamese city, taken on November 19, 2020

In contrast, we surveyed different junctions in Kisii town using Google Maps street views and there is no resemblance to the junction seen in the videos.

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