THE tragic death of a fifth grade student of Mirpur Girls Ideal Laboratory Institute hit by a running bus as she was crossing the road shows how unsafe our school students and others in the city streets and there is hardly any control over the bus drivers. Agitated local residents set the bus on fire but the life lost will never come back. Local police has arrested the bus driver but existing laws don’t treat such death as murder and powerful union leaders at the end will save the killer driver any way.
We must say this type of accident is not rare but drivers are defiant to drive carefully and often engage in competitive race with another bus to increase the risk of accidents manifold in city streets. Unruly nature of drivers is at fault in most cases and traffic police are almost ineffective to enforce discipline on them. Even during the Eid holidays the death tools were 254 in addition to 696 critically injured. In fact roads and highways remain open death traps and despite growing call to restraint speed and drivers must comply with driving rules, improvement of the situation is not encouraging.
Media reports said at least 2,297 people were killed and 5,480 injured in road accidents throughout the country in the last six months, a sharp rise in the death toll compared to the same period last year. The country witnessed a 35 percent decrease in road accidents while around 45 percent fall in casualties in 2016 compared to the previous year. But every death is tragic and the number is still to high to say that it is declining.
Several causes can be shown for road accidents. They include lack of implementation of law to stop plying unfit vehicles, employing unskilled drivers without having any legal license, reckless driving, overloading and overtaking tendency of drivers violating laws, not following traffic rules and regulations, long-time driving without any interval and a number of risky turning points on several roads and highways and dilapidated roads.
To solve this problem some useful steps can be considered. These are growing public awareness by publishing reports on road transportation on media round the year, arranging different programmes against road accidents by different social organisations, Road Transport and Bridges Minister’s active presence on roads, increased responsibility of policemen and mobile courts against faulty vehicles and fake driving licenses and identifying different risky turning points and establishing cautionary signs there and road repair. We must say traffic police, workers union leaders and bus owners must be more accountable to reduce the death in roads and highways.
Several causes can be shown for road accidents. They include lack of implementation of law to stop plying unfit vehicles, employing unskilled drivers without having any legal license, reckless driving, overloading and overtaking tendency of drivers violating laws, not following traffic rules and regulations, long-time driving without any interval and a number of risky turning points on several roads and highways and dilapidated roads.
To solve this problem some useful steps can be considered. These are growing public awareness by publishing reports on road transportation on media round the year, arranging different programmes against road accidents by different social organisations, Road Transport and Bridges Minister’s active presence on roads, increased responsibility of policemen and mobile courts against faulty vehicles and fake driving licenses and identifying different risky turning points and establishing cautionary signs there and road repair. We must say traffic police, workers union leaders and bus owners must be more accountable to reduce the death in roads and highways.
