The good news is that the much-awaited road safety law has been effective from last year. The government passed the law by toughening punishment of drivers involved in road crashes following so many protest rallies seeking justice for deaths of a good number of students in road accidents.
There is no denying that the government is working to build a modern, safe transport network all over the country. A lot of development works were done in road infrastructures.
The Act stipulates that whoever causes death by rash or negligent driving or riding on public pathways not amounting to culpable homicide will be punished with imprisonment for a term that may be up to five years, or with fine up to Tk 500,000, or with both, no matter what the Penal Code says about such cases.
It may be mentioned that deaths and damage to properties caused by road crashes have become a daily and deadly phenomenon in Bangladesh. The country has one of the worst crash rates in the world. Research studies explored multifaceted causes of road crashes ranging from population explosion, unplanned urbanisation, and tremendous growth of motorised as well as non-motorised vehicles.
The National Road Safety Council formed a task force with the home minister as its head, to implement the 111 recommendations that another high-powered committee, set up earlier by the council, made on disciplining the road sector and contain accidents.
The road transport and bridges minister admitted that implementation of the recommendations was slow and limited. As such, the execution of the road safety directives has become a dire necessity by the concerned stakeholders.
Issues such as training of drivers and awareness of passengers, proper engineering skills in road infrastructure, establishment of bus stoppages and bus bays, proper lane dividers, level crossing management and introduction of bus route franchise in the capital city which could contain traffic accidents have for long been in discussions. Nothing notable has happened as yet letting chaos on the road to continue as ever.
There are innumerable theories about the causes of road accidents. However, the underlying fact is that most of the accidents are caused by human errors and a good number of them can be prevented.
Indiscipline on the part of the drivers, blatant disregard for road traffic rules, over-speeding, fatigue-driving and poor conditions of roads are the main causes of most of the accidents.
People crossing busy roads, ignoring running vehicles, is now a common phenomenon. This puts the responsibility on both the people as well as the drivers. In some cases the drivers are helpless. Instead of using foot over-bridges, people jaywalk across the busy roads just to save a few minutes.
Foot over-bridges must be cleared of vendors. Many say the foot over-bridges are too high to climb. The authorities, as such, need to improve the over-bridges to encourage people to use them. Thus the first and the most important step is to make people use them. The media should highlight the importance of foot over-bridges in curbing accidents.
There should be more visible notice boards that can be used for informing the pedestrians not to use unauthorised routes to cross roads and furthermore, road signs must be used to direct them to use foot over-bridges.
The worrisome aspect is that there appears to be a lack of accountability everywhere. The drivers seem to believe they can get away with road traffic fatalities. On the other hand, law enforcers do not show the desired urgency in enforcing rules to penalise the violators.
There should be more visible notice boards that can be used for informing the pedestrians not to use unauthorised routes to cross roads and furthermore, road signs must be used to direct them to use foot over-bridges.
