Highway police tasked to cover a 100 kilometre-section of the Dhaka-Chattogram motorway under the Cumilla district have issued an advisory caution for bus drivers to check the speed of their vehicles as dense fog limited visibility in the area.
Police also ramped up activities to prevent major highway accidents, said Superintendent of Highway Police Cumilla region Md Rahmat Ullah. He also said all vehicles must be driven with fog lights on and at a controlled speed, reports bdnews24.com.
“Also, every vehicle must maintain a safe distance since drivers need to remember life is more valuable than time,” the police official said.
“There should not be much problem in dense fog if a driver follows the rules accordingly. In addition, bus drivers have plenty of experience driving in such dense fog situations,” he said.
“Still, we have issued necessary instructions to transport owners and drivers in this regard. Besides, highway police members are also working day and night in the field to prevent accidents.”
For drivers, dense fog on the highways at the beginning of the winter has always been an issue in Bangladesh and the intensity of fog since Wednesday on the Cumilla section of the Dhaka-Chattogram highways, the most important highway in Bangladesh, has raised the possibility of stalling of traffic after major accidents.
On Friday, between 8:00 am to 9:00 am, all kinds of vehicles including buses and trucks were found in the 50 km area of the highway from the Chauddagram area to the Cumilla cantonment moving very slowly with their headlights on.
After 900 am, the density of fog slowly started to dissipate.
Some of the bus and truck drivers bdnews24.com spoke to on Friday said they cannot even drive at half speed on an empty road due to the thick nature of fog.
Abul Kalam, a coach driver who was taking a break at a hotel adjacent to the highway under Cumilla’s Alekharchar area, said: “For the last few years, we drivers have to be very careful [during the winter] as even with the fog lights on, the vehicles in front are often hardly visible. It usually takes 6 to 7 hours to cross that section of road, which usually takes four hours max.”
Mohin Uddin, a Dhaka-bound truck driver from Feni, said: “It is difficult to drive in dense fog. I have to be extra careful while crossing the bends and link roads of the highway.”
Main Uddin, a microbus driver from Cumilla said: “It’s not possible to drive even at half speed [on the highway]. Even if the road is empty, I can only drive at a speed of 20 to 25 km per hour.”
