Government must prioritise road safety
It is deeply distressing to see how road crashes continue to take lives across the country, with the authorities who are supposed to ensure road safety appearing indifferent to the crisis. According to the latest Road Safety Foundation (RSF) report, at least 416 people were killed and 629 others injured in 458 crashes across Bangladesh in July this year. The latest incident reported took place at daybreak on August 7: in Bogura, seven people died and several others were injured when a speeding bus lost control and ploughed into them. Such tragedies have become horrifyingly frequent, and the saddest part is that most of them are preventable.
The causes behind these fatal crashes are all too familiar: unfit vehicles, poor road conditions, speeding, reckless and unskilled driving, excessive working hours for drivers, weak traffic management, and dangerous motorcycle riding, among others. Motorcycle crashes alone claimed 138 lives in July, accounting for about one-third of all road-related deaths. Dhaka division recorded the highest number of crashes and fatalities, while 164 accidents occurred after drivers lost control of their vehicles. Another recent RSF analysis found that, between 2020 and July 2026, Dhaka alone saw at least 1,384 people killed and 2,488 injured in 1,849 road crashes. Pedestrians and motorcyclists together accounted for more than 80 percent of these fatalities. In the capital, inadequate road capacity, mixed traffic, encroached footpaths, poorly designed footbridges, and the lack of bypass roads that force heavy vehicles to pass through the city at night are among the key factors behind road crashes. What’s worse, prolonged traffic congestion fuels impatience and aggressive driving, further increasing the risk of crashes.
Following the deadly crash in Bogura, local residents demanded speed breakers at the accident site, which the authorities assured would be installed. While this is a welcome step, acting only after precious lives have been lost is not the way to improve road safety. Instead, the authorities must implement a comprehensive road safety strategy. Hazardous locations across the road network should be identified and made safer before they become sites of recurring tragedy. It is also quite baffling that, despite road crashes being a regular occurrence in the country, government agencies still don’t maintain a uniform database on such incidents. How can they formulate effective policies or prevent road deaths without reliable official data?
Road crashes are the direct result of policy failures, weak enforcement of law, and institutional negligence. The government must demonstrate its political will to fully implement the Road Transport Act, 2018, carry out long-overdue reforms in the sector, strengthen the monitoring of dangerous driving, remove unfit vehicles from the roads, improve road engineering, and ensure effective coordination among the agencies responsible for transport management. Until road safety is treated as a national priority, our streets will continue to claim lives that should never have been lost.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments