Staff Reporter :
About 82 per cent level crossings in the country are unsafe. So far 178 people have died in the last seven months due to the accidents at the level crossings in the country.
According to a World Bank (WB) report released in February 2020, Bangladesh would need to invest an estimated $7.8 billion over the next decade to halve its road crash deaths.
Earlier on March 29, however, the WB approved $358m in funding to assist Bangladesh in improving road safety and reducing fatalities and injuries from road traffic incidents on high-risk highways and district roads.
“At least 1,052 minor and major accidents occurred in the railway sector in the last seven months. Most of the accidents took place due to negligence of the on duty gatekeepers at the level crossings,” Secretary General of Save the Road Shanta Farzana claimed in a statement on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Executive Director of Road Safety Foundation Saidur Rahman said on Saturday in separate statement that at least 219 people were killed in 116 accidents at railway crossings across the country between 2020 and July 28, 2022.
According to the report, 69 people were killed in 38 accidents in 2020 while 76 died in 43 accidents in 2021. Till July 28, 2022, 74 people lost their lives in 35 accidents.
According to the two organization’s statements, around 82 percent of railway crossings are unprotected across the country.
No guards or barriers to stop the traffic during train movement at these level crossings, the statements said and added the remaining 18 percent of railway crossings have guards and barriers, but accidents often occur due to negligence. According to Railway sources, The Eastern (Chittagong) and Western Railway (Rajshahi) took two separate projects in 2015 to reduce accidents at level crossings at a cost of Tk 196 crore.
Railways crossing barriers and guard houses have been constructed at 702 places under these two projects and even after appointing 1,532 guards by the railway department at these railway crossings, which still unsafe, a railway official on condition of anonymity told this correspondent.
According to the source, about 221 people have died in railway accidents between 2014 and 2021. Of them, 187 lost their lives at the level crossings.
There are 2,561 railway crossings in the country, which of them 1,321 are unapproved, railway sources said.
However, country’s 82 percent railway crossings are unsafe as has no barriers and guards to stop the vehicles during train movement. As a result, accidents are happening frequently after a few days. The victims are not getting justice due to the lack of provisions for incidents.
In September 2018, legislators rushed out the Road Transport Act 2018 because of city-wide protests in the capital after two Shaheed Ramiz Uddin Cantonment College students were killed in a road accident earlier that year.
Even though the government enacted the legislation, its implementation was questionable due to protests from transport operators and workers. When the government finally took the initiative to execute the legislation in November 2019, transport associations went on strike, demanding that specific provisions of the statute be amended.
The legislation was partially implemented because the government caved to the transport companies’ demands, keeping some of its provisions as transport leaders promised considerable reform.
The Road Transport Act provides five-year imprisonment if anyone causes an accident through reckless and negligent driving and kills or injures someone severely in the process. However, the number of people killed in road accidents continues to rise.
According to a report from the Road Safety Foundation, in 2021, 6,284 people were killed in 5,371 reported road accidents, including 927 women and 734 children. Moreover, in 2021, road hits increased by 13.47 percent, fatalities by 15.70 percent, and injuries by 1.20 percent. Nonetheless, several private organizations recorded a much higher number of deaths during the same period.
The absence of by-lanes or separate lanes for slow-moving cars is a significant cause of highway accidents. The United Nations declared 2011-20 as the decade of road safety action to acknowledge the economic impact of road accidents on developing countries.
Experts argue that policy-makers in countries like Bangladesh must consider road safety a public health and sustainable development issue instead of a transport issue. To discipline this sector and make it safer for everybody, it needs immediate institutional reform.
There will be no change until good governance, accountability, and planning are all ensured within the next few years. In addition, there are weak controls in issuing road permits and driver’s licenses and a lack of enforcement of traffic laws. It is time for the government to finally do something rather than stand by idly and watch as more innocent lives are lost on our dangerous roads.
Drivers should be paid a monthly wage rather than working on a contractual basis — this would reduce or stop reckless driving as vehicles would no longer compete for profit, experts said adding that it is needed inclusion the topic of road safety into the school curriculum so that children could learn principles of road safety from an early age.
Bangladesh’s dreams of middle-income status and progress are under threat due to a culture that has continuously failed to value the lives of its citizens.
