About removing extra-bumper

An orthopedic doctor of Dhaka met with his death while he was riding his motorbike and an overtaking car's extra-bumper caught his right foot and dragged him to death. The doctor had just dropped his son and wife at a school and was on his way to hospital when the fatal incident took place. Hearing a cracking sound the wife looked back only to realise that the sound came from her husband's head splitting into two as it bumped against the concrete of the road.

The car driver either did not feel the load of the dragged man or tried to speed away in fear, to escape a possible mauling by the mob. Or, it is more likely that he was a criminal fleeing the city. Strange that police have not yet found any clue to who he was. Police's efficiency!

The tragic death has prompted the metropolitan authorities in Dhaka and Chittagong to ban using extra-bumpers on automobiles.

Apparently this looks to be a fair decision, because the original bumper of any vehicle should be considered an adequate protective device, making the extra-bumper redundant. And, big vehicles like the five-tonnage lorries have such original buffer bumpers that they do not need any more extra steel load on them. But it is them, which seem to be happily wearing the extra steel rod frames of vicious shapes and weights both at the front and at the back. Rather than a safety measure, in their case the extra-bumper is really a source of danger for human lives and for other types of vehicles.

For the private cars, however, the ban will do a disservice. As most private cars are bought by their hard-earned money, the owners naturally remain very sensitive about the protection of their cars, particularly when the rickshaws in the streets of these two cities are most happy to friction their large front wheels against the rear bumpers of the cars. Or, probably, it is because of the extra-bumper that the rickshawala (rickshawpuller) feels happy to rub his front wheel against the back of a private car. An extra-bumper saves the car from such harassment from the rickshawala.

In fact, before the ban is put on the extra-bumper, the roads had better be made rickshaw-free, though that can never be.

Besides, if we deconstruct the happening of the accident, we will see that getting one's foot trapped by the extra-bumper of a car is a very rare kind of accident, an incident of the most outlandish nature. And, if it does happen, death cannot be the consequence if the car driver stops the car at once. Here, the driver did not stop his car, which resulted in the death of the doctor. Neither the police nor the people did stop the speeding car, which could have saved the doctor's life. So, the circumstances rather led to the doctor's death than the extra-bumper itself.

The decision of banning the extra-bumper may seem to many as overreaction.