Unfit vehicles rule city roads

Syed Shemul Parvez :
Unfit vehicles including dilapidated buses and lagunas are plying on the city’s roads and lanes freely without facing any law enforcement.
Statistics show that more than five lakh registered vehicles are now on the road without fitness clearance mainly due to poor monitoring by the authorities. Many unregistered vehicles are also plying without undergoing any fitness test.
Road safety experts blamed these vehicles as a major reason for the rising road crashes in recent years.
Though it has been four years into “Nirapad Sarak Chai” (We Demand Safe Roads) movement, but nothing has changed on the roads. Anarchy and indiscipline have remained as before.
It was seen on the spot that there is no right looking glass of a passenger bus in Meradia Bazar area of the capital on Thursday. Only the shell (Box) of the bus is hanging. Several windows were also broken. The bark of the bus is discolored as skeletal.
Despite that, this passenger bus was plying noisily with traffic police on the road not caring about it.
However, traffic police focus was seen only on motorcycles, CNG-powered auto-rickshaws and small trucks-covered vans in different areas of the capital.
Apart from this, they also verified the documents of private car-microbus. However, expensive private cars are generally avoided by the traffic police.
When asked why only covered vans, private cars or microbuses are being stopped here, Sergeant Badrul Alam said that all types of vehicles are stopped and their documents are searched.
It was learnt that from morning to afternoon (2 pm), they booked three cars. Among them, a covered van for lack of fitness, a CNG-powered auto-rickshaw for coming in the opposite direction and a passenger bus for obstructing the road.
In this regard when asked, Mostak Ahmed, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of DMP (Wari Traffic) told the New Nation that traffic police’s regular drives were on to single out the unfit vehicles including buses, legunas, motorcycles, CNG-powered auto-rickshaws and small trucks-covered vans and fine them.
“But if the BRTA issues fitness certificates to any unfit vehicles, we have nothing to do as everything shows okay on papers,” he added.
The traffic signal system, another most important aspect for road safety, is still operated through the age-old manual method, with police personnel gesturing with hands and sticks to control vehicular movement in an archaic manner.
More than 110 traffic signal lights installed across the capital, but only lights at the Gulshan intersection are now active.