THE high ways have mutated into death traps over the course of the last two decades. Not a single day passes without road accident deaths in the country. A report carried by this news paper on Saturday reported 16 road accident deaths around the country, 10 in a head on collision of 2 buses at Bashantapur in Rajbari district on Friday. Surprisingly, nobody took it seriously. The Communication Minister who otherwise seems smart and often surprises people with public consumption campaign propaganda, has done nothing worth of salt in his tenure. But this has to be changed, at least to save innocent premature deaths.
It is now obvious that the whole road transport network of the country has slowly turned out into a virtual death trap. The entire traffic system has gone wrong with traffic police seldom checking the fitness of vehicles. The drivers are known for their reckless driving. They often speak on cell phones while on the steering or make hasty turns, which end up in accidents. And it is a common scenario throughout the country, which kills dozens of people and injures many others on a daily basis. Most of these drivers are not physically strong and technically experienced. Alarmingly, they are often over worked and hence suffer from physical fatigue which is a good cause of bad driving which leads to accidents.
Road accidents claim on average 12,000 lives annually and injure over 35,000 persons, a BUET study notes. The losses due to road fatality to the economy stands at around 2 to 3 percent of the GDP. However, the road accident casualty figure provided by police stands at a much lower 3,000 dead and a similar number of grievous injuries each year. Thus officially an attempt is there to down play the loss of lives. Therefore, it needs no explanation why it is imperative to go all out to prevent the accidents from happening. On record, the country has a host of laws to regulate the traffic sector. But tragically, the law enforcers are failing to enforce those either by default or by decision. The net result — the roads are not safe.
The traffic police department must apply the rules against the offenders i.e. vehicles that overload, engage in speeding or the operators who do not maintain their vehicles. Similarly, the punishment regime for traffic rules violators must be stringent and the immunity of drivers who kills passengers on the way must go. There should be zero tolerance to corruption involving traffic police. Another cause of road accidents is untrained or poorly trained drivers operating freely on the roads. Drivers are known to get their licenses too easily through bribery. Such practices must be put to an end and corruption in certifying vehicles fit for movement by Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) in exchange for bribes must be stopped.
Road conditions are also dangerous for safe driving. There is nothing that corruption cannot buy in Bangladesh, including driver’s licence and fitness certificate for heavy vehicles.
If not death, drivers should face life imprisonment for deaths due to reckless driving. We want to see public interest litigations against the government for deaths on highways. The people pay tax not to die helplessly and government must be held accountable. Deaths on highways cannot be a matter just between the driver and the killed ones.
