Ensure smooth and safe travel on the highways during Eid

Every year during the two Eids maintaining the huge traffic on the highways poses a serious challenge for the authorities including the law enforcing agencies. The highway police who control the traffic lamentably fail to ensure safe and smooth journey of the Eid travellers during this time. This Eid is also no exception. The Eid rush has begun and reportedly slow moving traffic has started to wear away the patience of the passengers inside vehicles.

Once after hours when buses get out of jams, they move with very high speed that causes fatal accidents on the highways. But the scenarios were not supposed to be this precarious. The government spent a lot of money for improving the roads. The lanes of the highways have increased, but long jams often turn out to be more than 20-kilometer long with passengers stuck at the same place 10 to 12 hours every year during Eid.

More than the losses of hours on jams, deaths on roads tear the heart of people. Yet the government seems to be unmoved by this. But the government has a responsibility to ensure smooth and safe traffic, not just during two Eids, but all through the year.
It is the government that has to ensure that the road infrastructure it builds is not prone to accidents, drivers drive responsibly with the highway police, maintaining the traffic strictly following the traffic rules. But the government does not give the kind of urgency in doing this as it deserves.
The highways are now busy in carrying home-bound Eid travellers as well as sacrificing animals. There are many causes of road accidents. Besides reckless and careless driving, illegal and risky overtaking, carrying extra passengers on bikes without wearing helmets, violating traffic rules, operations of illegal and slow vehicles including the three-wheelers like Nasimon, Karimon, Bhatbhati, etc. on the highways also significantly contribute to road accidents.

If the government does not become serious about the plights of travelers and loss of lives on the highways, we will never see any improvement on the highway. In the absence of accountability, the nation is suffering from messy traffic.