MORE than 4,000 people die on Bangladesh’s roads every year. The country has one of the highest rates in the world, with more than 85 deaths for every 10,000 registered motor vehicles. That’s around 50 times higher than the rate in most western countries.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic injuries cause a loss of about 2 percent of GDP in Bangladesh, or about USD 3.3 billion (264 000 crore Takas) annually. This is almost equal to the total foreign aid received in a fiscal year. The losses include direct and indirect expenses, such as medical costs, insurance loss, property damage, family income losses and traffic congestion.
Experts say road crashes disproportionately affect the poor, making road safety a vital issue for economic development. Road accidents kill and injure people who are young and productive and therefore have a hidden development impact. Case studies in Bangladesh found that poor families were more likely than those better off to lose their head of household and suffer immediate economic effects as a result of road traffic injuries. The loss of earnings, together with medical, funeral and legal bills, can have a ruinous effect on a family’s finances, according to the WHO’s world report on road traffic injury prevention.
Bangladesh is trying to modernise its road and highways network, but population and commerce continue to outpace transport infrastructure, turning roads – devoid of proper safety measures – into death traps. Modernising highways is not necessarily the answer. Better roads, are not necessarily safer roads. Traditional road design aimed at reducing the number of crashes by widening and straightening roads. But that has no impact on the rate of death and disability because people simply start to drive faster. We must adopt the internationally accepted systemic approach to road safety, taking into consideration vehicles, roads and road users.
What this means in simple terms is that people have to be taught to drive better. There is no greater incentive towards safer driving than harsh and instant punishments for infractions of the law. No driver has yet been prosecuted for the death of any individual in Bangladesh. They are all immune from any sort of exemplary punishment as they have strong associations.
We need better highways, more lanes, lanes for slow transport movement like CNGs and private cars-but unless we have the mentality to combat the deaths by meting out harsh punishments we will never be safe on our highways. Impunity of the drivers will transform them into the death traps they currently are. We need to remove speed bumps, shops, and all other impediments from our highways so that they truly become highways in every sense of the word. In addition, engineers of the Highways and Road Department should focus more on building quality roads than on spending trips overseas and making substandard roads which fall apart with the advent of each monsoon.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic injuries cause a loss of about 2 percent of GDP in Bangladesh, or about USD 3.3 billion (264 000 crore Takas) annually. This is almost equal to the total foreign aid received in a fiscal year. The losses include direct and indirect expenses, such as medical costs, insurance loss, property damage, family income losses and traffic congestion.
Experts say road crashes disproportionately affect the poor, making road safety a vital issue for economic development. Road accidents kill and injure people who are young and productive and therefore have a hidden development impact. Case studies in Bangladesh found that poor families were more likely than those better off to lose their head of household and suffer immediate economic effects as a result of road traffic injuries. The loss of earnings, together with medical, funeral and legal bills, can have a ruinous effect on a family’s finances, according to the WHO’s world report on road traffic injury prevention.
Bangladesh is trying to modernise its road and highways network, but population and commerce continue to outpace transport infrastructure, turning roads – devoid of proper safety measures – into death traps. Modernising highways is not necessarily the answer. Better roads, are not necessarily safer roads. Traditional road design aimed at reducing the number of crashes by widening and straightening roads. But that has no impact on the rate of death and disability because people simply start to drive faster. We must adopt the internationally accepted systemic approach to road safety, taking into consideration vehicles, roads and road users.
What this means in simple terms is that people have to be taught to drive better. There is no greater incentive towards safer driving than harsh and instant punishments for infractions of the law. No driver has yet been prosecuted for the death of any individual in Bangladesh. They are all immune from any sort of exemplary punishment as they have strong associations.
We need better highways, more lanes, lanes for slow transport movement like CNGs and private cars-but unless we have the mentality to combat the deaths by meting out harsh punishments we will never be safe on our highways. Impunity of the drivers will transform them into the death traps they currently are. We need to remove speed bumps, shops, and all other impediments from our highways so that they truly become highways in every sense of the word. In addition, engineers of the Highways and Road Department should focus more on building quality roads than on spending trips overseas and making substandard roads which fall apart with the advent of each monsoon.
