Unfit vehicles and relaxed rules for fitness certificates are liable for road crashes

The number of unfit vehicles across the country has been on the rise over the years, often causing fatal road accidents. Road safety experts and activists blamed these vehicles as a major reason for the increasing road accidents. They attributed the rising number of such vehicles to increasing violation of the laws, non-compliance with the repeated High Court directives for both owners and authorities to remove the vehicles from roads and the relaxed rules for updating fitness certificates.
A strict implementation of the Road Transport Act 2018 and road monitoring are needed to contain the situation. According to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, the number of vehicles without fitness certificates was 5.08 lakh as of January 2022. Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader on January 26, 2021 told the parliament that 481,029 vehicles were running across the country without fitness as of December 2020. As of December 2019, the number of vehicles without fitness certificates was 292,595.
The authority, however, does not have any statistics as to how many of the total vehicles or of the unfit vehicles have gone past their economic life. Even in the capital, especially in its outskirts, some vehicles are seen running with old number plates instead of the retro reflective number plates which were introduced in 2012. While the number of vehicles with expired number plates is comparatively low in the big cities, the roads in rural areas are flooded with such vehicles in the absence of proper monitoring.
Unfit vehicles are not usually taken to workshops for maintenance and as many of these vehicles are past their economic life their owners have little interest to maintain these. As a result, these vehicles cannot maintain their balance and easily cause accidents. If vehicle owners can run their vehicles without fitness certificates, then why would they update the documents spending money?