Black spots: Most accident-prone areas
Sunday, 24 October 2010
Ripan Kumar Biswas
Drivers are blinded by the sunlight as it hits their windshield. But there is also “veiled glare,” which is indirect sunlight that comes in at an angle, or reflects off glass towers and other cars. While there are a few options or only precautions are available to overcome road accidents due to veiling glare like use the same precautions and care as driving in other hazardous conditions, like fog or rain, or if possible, change the driving route-use the north-south streets until find an east-west road with lots of trees or taller buildings, but to secure safe and smooth traffic in the highways, there are intensively comprehensive measures are available that can clearly reduce the number of traffic accidents resulting in fatalities at “Black Spots.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) says, every year 1.2 million people die in road accidents - making it, according to WHO’s 2002 calculations, the seventh biggest killer in the world, ahead of diabetes and malaria. The WHO predicted that between 2000 and 2015 road accidents would cause 20 million deaths, 200 million serious injuries, and would leave more than one billion people killed, injured, bereaved, or left to care for a victim. It also predicted that by 2020 road deaths would become the number three killer, behind heart disease and suicide, although AIDS is now a much bigger threat than when that forecast was made.
Traffic collisions are at epidemic levels in many countries and there seems to be a widespread acceptance that they are an inevitable consequence of ever-increasing mobility. Road accidents in Bangladesh today have gotten to the stage where it seems that there is an epidemic. The number of people seriously injured in road crashes is estimated to be more than 100,000 each year. Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates in road accidents, over 100 deaths per 10,000 registered motor vehicles. Road traffic deaths and injuries place an enormous strain on a country’s health care systems and on the national economy in general. In financial terms, accidents inflict a severe damage — no less than Tk 50 billion annually, or about 2% of the total GDP.
All deaths on our roads are tragic, and every effort should be made to reduce the number where it is possible. Typically, the accidents are blamed mostly on badly maintained roads, faulty vehicles, inexperienced drivers, and disregard for traffic rules. But a research report recently revealed by the BUET’s (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) Accident Research Unit (ARI) pin-points the technical factors behind frequent highway accidents in Bangladesh. According to the report, there are 219 “black spots” on ten major highways in Bangladesh where every year hundreds of people die in frequent accidents due to engineering and design faults. Most of the “black spots” fall in intersections, roundabouts, junctions and turnings on the highways. Some of these are accident-prone only because the drivers’ vision is obstructed by billboards and roadside trees. The report includes 2,349 fatalities in 2,515 accidents at those spots from 1998 to 2007.
Black spots are highway locations where the potential for accidents is inaptly high when compared to the established risk tolerance criteria. When collision frequency and consequence exceeded a set threshold, the crossing is considered a black spot. Black spots treatment is likely to be the most effective and straightforward in countries with no prior experience of accident remedial work. Many highway authorities in industrialised countries began in this way and only later moved on to mass and route action plans as experience increased. All of the strategies rely on the availability of data describing accidents and their locations to identify where accidents occur and what are the common features that contribute to them.
Almost every week accidents occur at each of these black spots in Bangladesh’s highways. Road safety experts including ARI have blamed the built-in technical fault of the Salehpur Bridge on the Dhaka-Aricha Highway from which a passenger bus plunged into the river Turag with at least 50 passengers. According to the ARI data, another accident took lives of four almost on the same spot on September 29. The use of road signs and markings to channelise traffic through complex intersections or to provide safe waiting areas for turning vehicles can often result in substantial reductions in accidents. In most cases in Bangladesh’s highways, drivers are often presented with misleading information or no advance warning that cause driver’s inability to cope with the particular combination of circumstances and environment.
Citing an example, Prof Md Shamsul Hoque, director of ARI said that the Utholi intersection on Dhaka-Aricha Highway in Manikganj is a black spot where two government secretaries Razia Begum and Siddiqur Rahman were killed by a speeding bus on July 31, 2010 because the driver of the bus might not be able to see a link road to Paturia from the intersection due to large billboards and trees. By reducing the complexity of an intersection or enabling manoeuvres and putting right signs can reduce the number of decisions and simplify the driving task and help drivers to progress in safety and comfort with a minimum of conflict with other traffic. But the signboard indicator of the highway department at the approach of the Utholi intersection wrongly marks as a turning point instead of a junction. In addition, from a certain distance the intersection appears as an uninterrupted standalone highway while heading towards Aricha.
Unfortunately, where there should be measures to ensure safety of travel, the government’s main department for highway construction and maintenance - the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) - never takes notice of engineering or design faults before or after constructions and leaves the highways as unsafe as they have been for years. The RHD even has no such list of black spots either. Allegations are often reported against the RHD where the quality of the works is always compromised, contractors get paid before project completion and key procurement rules are frequently breached in awarding the tender due to political attachment. Last year, the World Bank stopped giving support to a major road development project “Bangladesh Road Sector Reform Project” due to reported massive corruption in the past and ongoing road sector projects in Bangladesh.
While public interest-related activities should supersede anything, the value we place on human lives in here is discouraging, crude and outdated. Prof Hoque added most of the “black spots” would require only a low-cost measure of around Tk 10,000-12,000 to fix engineering faults that could save hundreds of lives.
As the value of human life is supreme and takes precedence over all other considerations, we urge the highest levels of government as well as RHD to make sure public safety at any cost.
The writer is a freelance writer based in New York. He can be reached at E-mail : Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com
Drivers are blinded by the sunlight as it hits their windshield. But there is also “veiled glare,” which is indirect sunlight that comes in at an angle, or reflects off glass towers and other cars. While there are a few options or only precautions are available to overcome road accidents due to veiling glare like use the same precautions and care as driving in other hazardous conditions, like fog or rain, or if possible, change the driving route-use the north-south streets until find an east-west road with lots of trees or taller buildings, but to secure safe and smooth traffic in the highways, there are intensively comprehensive measures are available that can clearly reduce the number of traffic accidents resulting in fatalities at “Black Spots.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) says, every year 1.2 million people die in road accidents - making it, according to WHO’s 2002 calculations, the seventh biggest killer in the world, ahead of diabetes and malaria. The WHO predicted that between 2000 and 2015 road accidents would cause 20 million deaths, 200 million serious injuries, and would leave more than one billion people killed, injured, bereaved, or left to care for a victim. It also predicted that by 2020 road deaths would become the number three killer, behind heart disease and suicide, although AIDS is now a much bigger threat than when that forecast was made.
Traffic collisions are at epidemic levels in many countries and there seems to be a widespread acceptance that they are an inevitable consequence of ever-increasing mobility. Road accidents in Bangladesh today have gotten to the stage where it seems that there is an epidemic. The number of people seriously injured in road crashes is estimated to be more than 100,000 each year. Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates in road accidents, over 100 deaths per 10,000 registered motor vehicles. Road traffic deaths and injuries place an enormous strain on a country’s health care systems and on the national economy in general. In financial terms, accidents inflict a severe damage — no less than Tk 50 billion annually, or about 2% of the total GDP.
All deaths on our roads are tragic, and every effort should be made to reduce the number where it is possible. Typically, the accidents are blamed mostly on badly maintained roads, faulty vehicles, inexperienced drivers, and disregard for traffic rules. But a research report recently revealed by the BUET’s (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) Accident Research Unit (ARI) pin-points the technical factors behind frequent highway accidents in Bangladesh. According to the report, there are 219 “black spots” on ten major highways in Bangladesh where every year hundreds of people die in frequent accidents due to engineering and design faults. Most of the “black spots” fall in intersections, roundabouts, junctions and turnings on the highways. Some of these are accident-prone only because the drivers’ vision is obstructed by billboards and roadside trees. The report includes 2,349 fatalities in 2,515 accidents at those spots from 1998 to 2007.
Black spots are highway locations where the potential for accidents is inaptly high when compared to the established risk tolerance criteria. When collision frequency and consequence exceeded a set threshold, the crossing is considered a black spot. Black spots treatment is likely to be the most effective and straightforward in countries with no prior experience of accident remedial work. Many highway authorities in industrialised countries began in this way and only later moved on to mass and route action plans as experience increased. All of the strategies rely on the availability of data describing accidents and their locations to identify where accidents occur and what are the common features that contribute to them.
Almost every week accidents occur at each of these black spots in Bangladesh’s highways. Road safety experts including ARI have blamed the built-in technical fault of the Salehpur Bridge on the Dhaka-Aricha Highway from which a passenger bus plunged into the river Turag with at least 50 passengers. According to the ARI data, another accident took lives of four almost on the same spot on September 29. The use of road signs and markings to channelise traffic through complex intersections or to provide safe waiting areas for turning vehicles can often result in substantial reductions in accidents. In most cases in Bangladesh’s highways, drivers are often presented with misleading information or no advance warning that cause driver’s inability to cope with the particular combination of circumstances and environment.
Citing an example, Prof Md Shamsul Hoque, director of ARI said that the Utholi intersection on Dhaka-Aricha Highway in Manikganj is a black spot where two government secretaries Razia Begum and Siddiqur Rahman were killed by a speeding bus on July 31, 2010 because the driver of the bus might not be able to see a link road to Paturia from the intersection due to large billboards and trees. By reducing the complexity of an intersection or enabling manoeuvres and putting right signs can reduce the number of decisions and simplify the driving task and help drivers to progress in safety and comfort with a minimum of conflict with other traffic. But the signboard indicator of the highway department at the approach of the Utholi intersection wrongly marks as a turning point instead of a junction. In addition, from a certain distance the intersection appears as an uninterrupted standalone highway while heading towards Aricha.
Unfortunately, where there should be measures to ensure safety of travel, the government’s main department for highway construction and maintenance - the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) - never takes notice of engineering or design faults before or after constructions and leaves the highways as unsafe as they have been for years. The RHD even has no such list of black spots either. Allegations are often reported against the RHD where the quality of the works is always compromised, contractors get paid before project completion and key procurement rules are frequently breached in awarding the tender due to political attachment. Last year, the World Bank stopped giving support to a major road development project “Bangladesh Road Sector Reform Project” due to reported massive corruption in the past and ongoing road sector projects in Bangladesh.
While public interest-related activities should supersede anything, the value we place on human lives in here is discouraging, crude and outdated. Prof Hoque added most of the “black spots” would require only a low-cost measure of around Tk 10,000-12,000 to fix engineering faults that could save hundreds of lives.
As the value of human life is supreme and takes precedence over all other considerations, we urge the highest levels of government as well as RHD to make sure public safety at any cost.
The writer is a freelance writer based in New York. He can be reached at E-mail : Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com