Media reports said on Tuesday another student was run-over and killed by a recklessly driven bus and a mob in protest vandalised and torched 9 buses in capital’s DIT Road in Rampura late Monday night. The bus hit the student while he was crossing the road. As he fell on the ground, the bus went over crushing him to death. The bus heading towards Malibagh was racing with another bus. The fatal accident occured in the city at a time when students were demonstrating for safe roads since a Notre Dame College student was killed by a Dhaka South City Corporation dustcart driver at the city’s Gulistan point on November 24. We would say both the killings in city streets are terribly shocking and we have no words to condemn those.
We want exemplary punishment of the killer drivers, although we know bus drivers enjoy impunity for such crimes backed by powerful unions and protected by politically powerful owners. The Rampura victim completed his SSC examination just two days ago. Son of a tea stall vendor, he had dreams of a beautiful future that has been abruptly ended by the accident. People protested at the spot on Monday night and students blocked the road Tuesday causing terrible traffic jams in the city. We know such protests produce hardly any result and yet hapless people protest to express their anguish. What is noticeable is the mindless race of one bus with another which creates anarchy on roads often killing people. This is because owners hire untrained unlicensed drivers at low costs and people pay with their life.
Such an untrained driver caused the killing of two students on airport road in 2016 and despite mammoth protests in the capital and all over the country, discipline on roads has not returned. Killing of the Natore Dam College student also resulted from reckless driving by an unlicensed driver of Dhaka South City Corporation where few regular licensed drivers reportedly sell their jobs to unlicensed ones and they do a third job. We want to ask how and when the government will be able to enforce discipline in city streets. It would have been much easier if the traffic police were properly taking care of their job detaining reckless drivers. Such killings can in no way go unabated or unpunished.
