Staff Reporter :
The desperate riding of motorbikes in the capital and national highways has now become a menace to lives as these vehicles are prone to regular accidents.
Lack of surveillance by the concerned authority of the government and disregard to traffic rules and regulations by the bikers are mainly responsible for such fatalities, Bangladesh Mobile Phone Consumers’ Association (BMPCA) said on Monday.
Though the ride sharing motorbikes have to follow the mandatory policy but most of these vehicles do not run on the app based service rather they are carrying passengers on contract basis.
Meanwhile, the whole country witnessed a flurry of motorbikes plying recklessly on the Padma Bridge on the first day of its opening to traffic, and such desperate riding led two bikers killed in an accident on the bridge on Sunday night.
Against this backdrop, the Bridge Division imposed a ban on the motorbikes to ply on the Padma Bridge for indefinite period.
BMPCA President Mohiuddin Ahmed in the statement said, “Over the last two and three years the ride sharing motorbikes have been contributing to serious traffic jams and accidents.”
“The traffic system in the capital has lost its discipline due to the desperate plying of the motorbikes. Motorbike accidents have become common affairs now. But the concerned authority BRTA is not paying any attention here,” he added.
He also said, “The ride sharing motorbikes don’t use the mobile apps. Now the bikers prefer the contracts for carrying passengers. The bikers are now desperate, creating anarchy in the streets.”
The app based ride sharing was introduced in the country to provide services to the people. Even the government passed a ride sharing policy in 2018 to bring discipline in this sector.
The app based ride sharing organistions need permission to run such services from the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and other government agencies.
For such permission, the service providers need to provide necessary documents, including the number of drivers, number of application users, licences of the vehicles and so on.
Even the fare for a ride is also fixed by the BRTA in order to have control over the service providers.
In the beginning the bikers and other ride sharing vehicles used to carry passengers through the apps of the specific service providers like Uber and Patho.
But now the bikers and others don’t use the apps and carry passengers on contract basis, the BMPCA said.
“When the ride sharing vehicles don’t use the mobile apps, they cannot be recognised easily and passengers may become the victims of various incidents,” Mohiuddin Ahmed said.
According to BRTA, there are about 5.84 lakh motorbikes in the capital. Uber has about one lakh registered drivers under their app while Pathao has about 1.5 lakh drivers registered.
In addition, there are other ride sharing services like Sohoj Dot Com, Sam, O Bhai and O Bon and their registered bikes are about 50 thousand.
Based on this statistics, there are about three lakh registered bikers in the capital and these bikers have more than one application to ride their bikes.
Most of these bikers run their motorbikes for six to 10 hours per day and it is their main source of income.
It clearly shows that this sector has a huge business and when this service is run without proper channel, the government is being deprived of huge amount of revenues, he added.
Mohiuddin Ahmed said that the government should immediately pay attention to this sector in order to bring discipline in the streets.
“BRTA should be technology friendly so that it can tab on the app based ride sharing organisations. Everyone should be brought under accountability,” he added.
The ride sharing drivers especially the bikers need proper training so that they follow the traffic rules strictly in order to prevent accidents because the security of the passengers is the top priority of this service, he added.
The rising number of motorbike accidents across the country has forced the government to think to ban the plying of motorbikes on the national highways in order to curb accidents.
Even a committee formed by the government recently recommended banning the plying of motorbikes during the Eid vacations as they have founded that the motorbikes were responsible for most of the accidents on highways during this time.
According to Road Safety Foundation report in May, a total of 156 people died in 128 motorcycle accidents in 14-day journey during the last Eid-ul-Fitr.
