Lax oversight makes roads death-traps

Over-speeding, faulty design and lack of maintenance of roads, weak enforcement of traffic rules are the major causes of the increasing number of fatal accidents on highways that claim scores of lives every month.
Experts, the highway police chief, campaigners for road safety, victims and drivers identified a number of causes for the ongoing surge in fatal road accidents and suggested that many of the fatalities could have been avoided if the speed limit had been enforced.
According to the statistics of the police headquarters, 2,958 people were killed in 3,381 road accidents across the country in 2009, 3,765 people in 2008 and 3,749 in 2007, according to the statistics.
The number of casualties of road accidents, however, is much higher than recorded as most of the accidents remain beyond the knowledge of the police.
The latest fatalities occurred on Saturday when the acting secretary to the women and children affairs ministry and the chairman of the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation died in a head-on collision on the Dhaka-Aricha Road at Shivalaya in Manikganj.
The parliamentary standing committee on the cultural affairs ministry, at a meeting on Sunday, recommended that the law ministry take the initiative to enact a law for exemplary punishment of drivers responsible for fatal road accidents.
Md Shamsul Hoque, head-on collision on the Dhaka-Aricha Road at Shivalaya in Manikganj.
The parliamentary standing committee on the cultural affairs ministry, at a meeting on Sunday, recommended that the law ministry take the initiative to enact a law for exemplary punishment of drivers responsible for fatal road accidents.
Md Shamsul Hoque, director of the Accident Research Institute of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said that there are numerous reasons behind the road accidents including crossing of the speed limit and lack of discipline on the highways in the rural areas.
‘I conducted research on nine separate road accidents and found nine separate reasons behind them,’ said Shamsul.
Sohrab Hossain, chief of the highway police, identified rash driving, unskilled drivers and unroadworthy vehicles as the major causes of accidents. He said that drivers care little about the road signs and the speed limit, and overtake each other even on risky turns and frail bridges.
‘To prevent accidents is not only responsibility of the police; the owners, workers, passengers and the BRTA [Bangladesh Road Transport Authority] should all be involved,’ said Sohrab.
Campaigner for road safety Ilias Kanchan, film star and founder of Nirapod Sarak Chai, said that non-enforcement of traffic laws, particularly failure to enforce the speed limit, was the main reason of road accidents.
‘Accidents cannot be stopped if the laws are not enforced,’ said Kanchan, who has been campaigning for many years to prevent accidents.
Several sources, including drivers, said that the few weighing machines and speed detectors, installed at various points on the highways, are either not used or remain out of order, and the highway police fail to keep track of the long-haul vehicles that cause fatal accidents.
‘The officers-in-charge of the highway police stations are supposed to monitor the vehicles and drivers by using the machines. But they just weigh the vehicles and allow them to go away after taking money from the drivers for extra weight,’ the sources said.
The boss of the highway police admitted that proper monitoring is not being done, but said that they have been suffering from lack of equipment and inadequate budget and manpower.
A driver said that traffic congestion forces them to resort to rash driving which leads to accidents. ‘There is always a time limit set by the owner of the vehicle to reach a particular destination. The traffic congestion eats away a significant amount of time so we have to reach the destination by crossing the speed limit,’ he said.
Shamsul Hoque said that there is no discipline on the roads of the country. ‘The highways are riddled with potholes, have no dividers in most of the places, and road signs are usually missing. Moreover the plying of non-motorised and faulty vehicles on the highways creates chaos. So it is not surprising that there are so many road accidents,’ he added.
He said that domestic and farm animals encroach on the highways, so motorised vehicles, especially large buses, find it difficult to steer smoothly and safely along some stretches of the roads.
Sohrab said that accidents occur as unskilled drivers engage in deadly competition on the roads.
This special police wing created in 2005, the highway police, is supposed to control the speed of vehicles on the highways and check their documents and also identify the over-loaded trucks, besides ensuring the safety of the travellers.
Though the highway police stations are equipped with speed detectors, the speed limit cannot be enforced due to lack of manpower, said a highway police officer.
Communications minister Syed Abul Hossain on July 13 told the Parliament that the present government has undertaken various steps to prevent road accidents, to which end it has also reconstituted the 32-member National Road Safety Council.
‘The National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan 2009-2010 was approved at a meeting of the council,’ he said, adding that 24 implementing organisations are executing the road safety plans with money from their own budget.
The minister also said that a master plan has been taken up to upgrade the national highways, which will have four lanes and dividers.
‘The work for upgrading the Dhaka-Chittagong and Dhaka-Mymensingh Highways has already begun. Since the four-lane highways will have dividers, the head-on collisions will be stopped,’ he said.
The other steps include holding of seminars and discussions to raise awareness, training the drivers properly, taking legal action against the drivers holding fake licences, detaining unfit vehicles, conducting mobile courts, publishing road safety slogans in the newspapers and screening short films on television channels including the BTV, he said.

Courtesy of NewAge