Had the mini bus not taken away the life of Zaglul Ahmad Chowdhury, Advisory Editor of this newspaper, his column, 'Off the Cuff' or news analysis would have appeared by now. At 65, quite a ripe age, he was prolific enough and might have contributed to the paper and graced numerous talk shows on TV channels if his life was not snapped so suddenly and tragically. Still more tragic is the fact that the gentleman par excellence, that he was, was not given immediate medical attention when three kind young souls took him to a medical facility. That clinic has rightly been closed down on charge of illegally running with just a licence for a diagnostic centre. Whether he would have survived the injury he received at the time of getting down from the bus if he was given proper medical care immediately will never be known. But once again, medical practitioners gave a very poor account of themselves.
The reality is that chaos reigns supreme in road transportation and medical service in this county. But this column today focuses on road and highway accidents -only more so because this newspaper has lost a valued member of its family to what is generalised as an accident but essentially a plain murder. This, moreover, comes against the background of a drive against vehicles and drivers without fitness certificate and driving licence respectively. Then in making an analysis of the drive in a view-exchange meeting on Tuesday, the road communication and bridges minister claimed the number of road accidents has fallen as a result of the drive.
Zaglul Ahmed is not the only one to have been killed so tragically, Mozammel Huq Montu, then news editor of the Sangbad and Yusuf Pasha, a newsman of the Janakantha met the same fate years ago. In each of those two cases, the vehicle ran over them as the men behind the steering wheel drove those recklessly and beyond the road demarcation. Then the highway crash that killed one of the highly acclaimed film-makers, Tareq Masud and a creative media personality Mishuk Munier drove the message home that hardly anyone is safe on the country's roads and highways. Now fatal road accidents have become the order of the day. And one easily discerns an echo of the much talked about naïve statement another cabinet colleague of the road transport and bridges minister made following Tareq's and Munier's premature death.
Even on the day, the minister made that claim of a positive impact of the drive on road accidents, a student of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) of the American International University Bangladesh (AIUB) was killed by a bus. What is most outrageous is the way the youth was done to death. Talking on his cell phone in one hand, the bus driver did not even have the slightest inkling that he had rammed into a motor cycle. The hapless boy was first thrown out, then run over under the front wheel and finally caught in the back axle to be dragged about a 100 metre or so and still the man behind the steering wheel continued his conversation on his phone. The day before this tragedy, another youth was crushed in between two buses in competition with each other for luring more passengers at Malibag intersection.
All this speaks volumes about the 'could not care less attitude' of the drivers in the country. This fact again is corroborated by the police record, according to which, 90 per cent road accidents are caused by reckless driving or other blunders by drivers. The minister concerned has come up with facts and figures following the 20 days' drive. He discloses that 11,000 cases were filed, fines realised to the tune of Tk7.8 million, 45 transport operators were sent to jail and 296 vehicles were confiscated. According to his own admission during these 20 days 34 road accidents occurred which he reckons is lower than before. But were only 296 vehicles unfit? Next he sounds upbeat that the tendency for procuring fitness certificate among transport owners is on the rise and this, he reasons, has a link to the drop in the number of accidents. It appears transport owners are receiving fitness certificates for their road-unworthy vehicles. Legalising illegality is the game, maybe.
When drivers are mainly to blame for accidents, how can this be so simplified? The malaise is identified and proper medicine must be applied there. When in most mega cities, public transport gets improved in terms of service and care, in this country things are going from bad to worse. Even in the capital city, there are hardly any designated bus stops. Buses either stop well before the right place or after it has been left behind and that too mostly right in the middle of the road. It is the passengers who have to take life into their hands before disembarking. Public buses pick up and drop passengers anywhere on the road and some of the passengers are also insistent that they be dropped at any place they desire.
Decades ago drivers did not entertain any such idea of dropping and picking up passengers from any place. They used to bring the vehicle as close as possible to the footpath so that no other vehicle could pass by the left side when passengers got down. Also, there are buses with two doors but this facility is abused in order to maintain the chaos.
The idea was that the front door would be used for the passengers to alight and the rear one to get on board a bus. Discipline can be enforced if the public also cooperate. But when everyone turns a blind eye to such basic urban habits and practices, there is no knowing how many more lives will perish under the wheels.
(It would have been proper to write an obituary on a man of Zaglul Bhai's stature, him being a nice soul, because credit goes to him for penning down such write-ups on numerous people of different callings. But I take this opportunity to pay my homage to his memory as well as make it a point that the traffic chaos needs to be streamlined before more like him leave this world in such a tragic manner.)
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