Another year of road rage, accidents

Yet another year, 2018, went by with a rising number of road accidents in the absence of safe roads, triggering widespread student demos in Dhaka city.
The Road Transport Act (RTA), which was shelved for years, was passed in parliament hurriedly in September to tackle a situation which was going out of hand.
Hundreds of students from different educational institutions took to the streets after a bus killed two students of Shaheed Ramizuddin Cantonment School and College at a stand on Airport Road on July 29.
The government initially sat tight and took it a political issue, but it had to initiate to approve the draft RTA within a day to tackle the situation.
The draft had been at law ministry for a year on the ground of vetting as a vested quarter did not want to enact the law before the general election.
But with the prime minister's intervention, the draft RTA was approved by cabinet on August 06 and railroaded through parliament on September 19.
On the debit side, the passage of the RTA led to launch a fresh strike by transport workers demanding an amendment to the provision of punishment.
The agitators also set an example of controlling traffic system as their protest forced passers-by and drivers to follow rules and carry legal documents for the next couple of days.
Centring on the student movement, the government also revived its initiative to form a company, BusNet, for introducing uniform bus service in the capital.
It constituted a 10-member committee, led by Dhaka South City Corporation mayor Sayeed Khohan, to work on a system to operate bus on six routes here.
Other members of the body were from Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority, Dhaka Metropolitan Police and Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha and bus owners and workers associations.
The committee was guided to proceed with the idea progressed by late Dhaka North City Corporation mayor Annisul Huq to speed up the process of implementation.
However, it sat once without progress till now.
In 2018, the number of road accidents and related fatalities continued to mount during holidays on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha.
According to a survey by the Nirapad Sarak Chai (Nischa), the number was 2,316 in 2016, which grew to 3,349 in 2017.
It counted the number to 2,672 till September studying reports published in mainstream newspapers.
Jatri Kalyan Samity also claimed that 259 people were killed and 960 others injured in 237 accidents across the country in 13 days during the Eid-ul-Azha vacation.
At least 274 people were killed in 205 crashes while travelling during Eid-ul-Azha last year and it was 248 in 193 accidents during Eid-ul-Azha trip in 2016.
WHAT'S IN RTA
The new legislation introduced the provision of highest imprisonment of five years with fines up to Tk 300,000 for various road accident-related offences and traffic rule violations.
The levels of punishment and fines were increased manifold in the RTA compared to the previous law named the Motor Vehicle Ordinance.
Civil-society members and transport experts claimed those were not enough to bring discipline in the street and ensure road safety.
But transporters observed a 48-hour strike from October 28 demanding lessening the degrees of punishment for accidents.
The RTA was passed keeping a provision of trying accident cases under sections 302 and 304 (b) of the Penal Code 1807 for death after it is proven a murder.
Section 302 of the code refers to death penalty if it is proven that the death in a road crash is a murder.
Trials of road accidents, which would be found occurred due to negligence, reckless driving and other reasons, will come under Section 304 (b).
The workers pressed for eight demands like withdrawal of provisions of the offence as non-bailable, fines Tk 500,000 and class-VIII educational qualification for getting a driving licence.
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