When people will stop dying in reckless road accidents

NEWS reports on Sunday said seven persons were killed and 15 others injured when a bus fell into a roadside ditch at Bhaluka in the Mymensingh district in the previous day. The injured are now undergoing treatment in hospitals. The Dhaka-bound bus met the accident when its driver lost control over the steering.
Bus accident on Roads and Highways is not anything new but such accidents are hitting the families of the victims anew every time such fatalities take place. We have always decried such events demanding credible measures of road safety to protect passengers’ life by improving road conditions and safety regime. But as it appears there is no noticeable change in the situation. Rather the authorities are routinely passing such deaths as accidents and not as murder avoiding to hold the owners and drivers accountable. The accidents take place because the bus was unfit or the driver was not well-trained or running overtime suffering from sleeplessness or working fatigue. But the owners and drivers are going escort free without facing trial. Rather the government often pays token money to families for burial removing pressure on the owner and driver to be liable criminally and financially to face trial. We don’t know how long this impunity culture for killing would continue in which the transport sector is minting money without least care for safety of passengers.
The country’s 21000-long roads and highways have virtually turned into death trap for people on daily basis and according to a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) reports annual death toll from road mishaps in Bangladesh stand at 18,000 and experts and ‘safe road’ campaigners say the situation is deteriorating over the past few years. It appears that the government forms a probe body after every such accident and while it removes pressure for legal action the probe committee report as to who is responsible and how to stop recurrence of accidents always passed unheeded. But we can’t accept road accidents as part of destiny as some people want to say to console families, rather the government is the one responsible for tragedies as it is not doing anything to bring improvement in the situation.
The number of vehicles is only growing in the roads and highways as also in the cities but the authorities are yet to draw up effective plans to examine, on a priority basis, the fitness of those vehicles and their drivers to keep pressure that they are plying vehicles with less vulnerability to passengers’ safety. Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) is primarily responsible for motor vehicles’ and their drivers’ fitness while highway police and local police in the district are responsible to demand compliance from drivers plying on roads and highways. They are blamed for many indiscipline instead of enforcing the discipline. We would demand action to stop killing of people on roads and highways.