Without road dividers, narrow highways become death trap; 904 people killed in 4 months
Narrow highways, lack of road dividers on accident-prone stretches, faulty road markings and, above all, reckless driving continues to take lives on highways of the country, experts said.
The experts also said buses had become the road menace and most accidents with high casualties were caused by recklessly driven buses.
Yesterday, eight people, including seven of a family, died in a head-on collision between a bus and a microbus in Cox’s Bazar. One of the vehicles was not in its lane at the highway curve where the accident took place. There were no road dividers; just a dashed white line even though it was a curve, where usually a solid white line tells drivers to stick to their lanes.
On Wednesday, 12 people, including nine of a family, died when a bus trying to overtake a truck hit an oncoming microbus at Keraniganj on the outskirts of the capital. Cautious driving or a road divider there could have prevented the accident.
Last year, 12,226 vehicles of five modes were involved in accidents causing 2,546 deaths. Of the vehicles, 1,063 were buses, according to a source in the police headquarters. This year, up to April, 964 accidents took place across the country claiming 904 lives and injuring 853 others, the source said.
Prof Hasif Mohammad Ahsan of Buet’s Accident Research Institute (ARI) yesterday said at the Keraniganj accident spot, there was a dashed white line in the middle of the road. Had there been a divider there, vehicles would have been forced to stay in their lanes, he said.
The ARI had revealed that 30 percent of the road accidents between 1998 and 2010, which claimed around 1,200 lives per year, could have been prevented had there been road dividers or speed bumps at the spots.
Prof Ahsan yesterday told The Daily Star that they sent their findings to the authorities concerned in 2009 on their own accord and on some occasions the authorities sought ARI’s research results but little had changed.
“I believe that dividers can be installed on single carriageways, narrow dividers can be installed there,” he said, adding that travellers could not be left to their fates when they were on the roads.
He believes dividers should be installed on single carriageway highways and the road should be made wider every few kilometres so that faster vehicles could pass slower ones.
ARI sources said during the last caretaker government’s rule and on several other occasions, it handed over a list of accident-prone spots on 10 major highways across the county to the authorities concerned. But so far only a few spots received attention on Dhaka-Aricha highway, which has 22 such accident-prone spots.
Many Roads and Highways Department experts are reluctant to install divider on single carriageways saying that it causes tailbacks when a vehicle suffers a breakdown, ARI sources said.
Prof Shamsul Hoque of Buet said, “If service roads are not introduced to highways, slow moving and fast moving vehicles will bunch up which will make fast moving vehicles overtake and consequently fast moving vehicles will go on to the wrong lane while overtaking.”
Prof Shamsul Hoque, former ARI chief, said road dividers could work as a deterrent in this situation.
Bangladesh Road Transport Authority Director (enforcement) Tapan Kumar Sarker told The Daily Star that road dividers were the best remedy to check head-on collisions on highways.
He, however, claimed that it was not possible to install dividers on single carriageways but the authorities could install them at accident-prone stretches after widening the roads there.
He said they had been conducting a countrywide programme to create awareness among drivers so that they stop overtaking at turns, intersections and bridges and overtake safely.
Film star and Chairman of Nirapad Sarak Chai, a movement demanding safe roads, Ilias Kanchan yesterday told The Daily Star dividers compel vehicles to stay on their lanes.
He said they had been demanding such measures that ensure one-way travel of vehicles and prevent head-on collisions.
The Daily Star failed to reach communications Secretary MAN Siddique over the phone in the last two days for his comments on narrow roads, road dividers and faulty highway designs as he was in Turkey.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
