It is really hard to find a day without any road mishap and casualties in Bangladesh which carries a legacy of loss of lives and limbs on a large scale. Road accidents, like those of Habiganj accident on Saturday as reported by The New Nation, are proving to be more dangerous than the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In January of this year, the number of fatalities from road accidents was more than that of lives lost to Covid-19. The measures – lockdown, educational institutes closure for hundreds of days – taken to contain the pandemic are no match to the steps taken to stem the street accidents.
As many as 38,635 people were killed in the country in the space between 2015 and 2020, according to the Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity. In 2021, nearly 5629 road fatalities claimed 7809 lives while in 2020 around 6,686 people were killed in 4,891 accidents across the road, river and rail all over the country. In 2019, the figure was 7855 deaths in 5,516 road crashes across the country. Lower deaths in 2020 than the previous years do not indicate an improvement in the situation, rather the countrywide lockdown played the main role.
A World Bank report published in February 2020 revealed that Bangladesh needs to invest an estimated extra USD 7.8 billion over the next decade to cut its road crash fatalities by fifty percent. We recognize the fact that the high death rate on roads is due to a lack of investment in systemic, targeted and sustained road safety programmes.
Besides, a poor controlling measure is in place which issues road permits and drivers’ licenses, and enforces the road traffic laws laxly. Due to corruption, it is much easier in Bangladesh to get a driving license even if one has no experience of driving. They may be called paper drivers. Besides, unfit vehicles are able to ply the roads due to the corruption. Bangladesh lost 1.6 billion of its gross domestic product to traffic crashes alone in 2012, said The Lancet quoting the World Health Organisation data.
If we want to minimize the number of road crashes, it is necessary to find the reasons behind such incidents. The primary reason appears to be reckless driving and their low payment is responsible for their recklessness. They look for more and more trips even among drivers of the buses of the same company and it is to make both ends meet. Among other reasons include: lack of awareness of traffic rules amongst the drivers, allowing unfit vehicles on the streets, plying of non-mechanised vehicles along high-speed vehicles on the highway, faulty construction of the highways and to some extent negligence on the part of pedestrians and bystanders.
With the target to contain the crashes, the government enacted Road Safety Act 2018 with stringent provision of fines and penalties. But when the government tried to enforce it, transport owners, drivers and workers resisted the move. Even influential transport leaders are acting as barriers towards ensuring safe commuting which is a human right.
