THE deadliest-ever road crash killed at least 35 people and injured 50 others as two buses collided head-on in Natore on Monday. The government immediately formed a three-member committee to investigate into the incident as it has done after every accident. The probe body has been asked to submit its report within three days, but past experiences have shown that the investigation report never comes out, or if published the deceased were found guilty to as to not tarnish the government image. Though the ‘highways of death’ is responsible for lowering two to three percent of GDP per annum, no visible venture to fend off the situation is taken by the government despite media outcry.
A national daily estimated that as many as 1,261 people were killed in road accidents so far this year in 159 incidents, though the actual number is likely to be much higher than the estimation. The number of road accidents and causalities in Bangladesh is higher than in other parts of the world, according to the WHO’s report on Road Safety 2013. According to a local research centre PPRC, the main reasons for road accidents in Bangladesh are reckless driving, untrained drivers, unfit vehicles, roadside activities, poor enforcement of traffic laws, faulty road designs, culture of impunity, lack of road safety awareness, plying of motorised and non-motorised vehicles on the same road, and mental, physical and financial pressure on drivers. Official statistics showed that 3,000 people die a year in road accidents across the country, but the figure would go up to 5,000 or more if deaths on the way to hospitals were taken into account.
This daily said the Natore accident occurred on the highway when a Rajshahi-bound bus overtook a truck and rammed a Gurudaspur-bound local bus coming from the opposite direction. The accident happened, according to witnesses, due to reckless driving, a common cause even when noted filmmaker Tareque Masud and media personality Munier Mishuk and three others died on August 13, 2011 and 42 children were killed in Chittagong on July 2011. The death toll will rise in the future for the same cause as 97 percent of drivers claimed to have licences but had poor knowledge of road regulations, while 20 percent said they had got licences without taking any tests.
To change the scenario, our busy Communications Minister is going on making promises before the camera, but people doubt the Minister’s ability to take effective measures, rather he seems unwilling to take any responsibility. Experts opined that only combined efforts of the government and the private sectors would decrease the deaths, but the suggestions remain unheeded, rather the passengers keep on dying in the mobile death traps we know as highways.
