Death on the highways: There is more than meets the eye

The tragic and untimely deaths of film-maker Tareque Masud and media icon Mishuk Munier at the prime of their lives are unpardonable because these two positively creative lives were worth more than a million ordinary Bangali lives like mine. Naturally, this prompted a variety of reactions; responses from the civil society deserve kudos. There are now corporate initiatives focusing on road- safety as well. Such initiatives redefine the concept of social responsibility (SR), and should serve as an example to other socially responsible entities. Many sought to identify the reasons for the rampant road accidents - fatal ones at that - and came up with reasonable remedial ideas. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are on an average 20,000 deaths per annum in Bangladesh due to road accidents, and this is one of the highest in the world. A BUET research found that 60 per cent of the deaths are caused by defective and unfit buses and trucks - reportedly mostly owned by members of the law enforcement agencies and politicos, albeit benami. Then there are cases of fake licenses, driving without licenses, etc. One local daily carried a photo-example of a teenage driver without a valid driving license, driving a police requisitioned minibus to and from courts where justice is supposed to be dispensed to offenders like him. Another electronic media, telecasted the incident of detecting five BTRC drivers with fake driving licenses in just one afternoon. Yet another news channel cited about police discouragement in lodging FIRs for accidents. These are all eye-openers no doubt, but these are just scraping the surface. An all embracing in-depth investigative report is yet to see the light of the day. When we talk about highways, what do we really mean? How does a highway materialise? As a conscious citizen and from a common sense point of view, I would presume that constructing a highway should involve the following steps at the minimum: Concept definition, traffic flow calculation, traffic growth projection, etc.; route identification; alignment delineation; land acquisition considering future expansion needs; basic design following appropriate methodology; provision for emergency lanes on both sides; super elevation at bends (on a highway, sharp bends are anathema); slopes and gradients and the like; detail design including entry into and exit from the highway at different points; construction design after necessary soil tests, load calculation, flood level determination, water drainage, longevity, etc.; actual construction and construction supervision; preventive maintenance system and victim support system; quality assurance; and project management. In a flow chart, building a highway would appear as in the figure below. As can be seen, appropriate and effective management, and quality assurance must be maintained at all levels and in every phase of the project. Management and Quality Assurance: There is a saying that 'the neck of the bottle' is at the top. Management and Leadership must start from the top. If the top leadership is not capable, then all else will end up in a mess. Communications management is a sophisticated and technology-oriented system. Therefore, by necessity, the person who would head such a task must have a reasonable degree of expertise. This does not imply that the top leadership has to be a technical expert, but such a person must have a minimum level of expertise so as to ably lead the expert team beneath. To our knowledge, the communications ministry has never been headed by such capable persons, be it at the ministerial level or at the secretarial level. Do we have to continue with this practice? Quality assurance at all levels of highway construction is another area of weakness in Bangladesh, e.g. the bridges on the rivers around the Dhaka city. But again, this is more of a leadership issue at the top than anything else. Change and improvement cannot be expected unless the top leadership changes for the better. When will this happen? Designing bends and turns: While designing a highway, sharp bends must be avoided. Because highways are by definition meant for high-speed movement of vehicles, any bend is a potential source of accidents, not to speak of sharp bends. On mountainous or similar terrains where sharp bends on highways cannot always be avoided, more than adequate precautionary measures (like super elevation, huge magnifying mirrors, speed limit signs, no overtaking signs, profusely adequate number of warning signs, etc.) must be there. Do our highways have any of these? While designing highway bends, super elevation of adequate degree must be provided. Because of gravitational effects vehicles tend to veer outwards while negotiating bends. Super elevations, when accurately designed; neutralize such impacts of the gravitational forces. In fact the spot where Tareque Masud, Mishuk Munier and three others met the tragic accident was a sharp bend without any super elevation and adequate warning signs. Why do we not see any super elevation on our highways? Highway design must consider traffic into and out of a highway. It is only in Bangladesh that one can see perpendicular entries into and exit out of highways. This is unthinkable in such a technology-oriented discipline, because basic common sense would dictate that there must be a parallel phase before entry into or exit out of highways. Major accidents do happen at such intersections. Why must this unpardonable mistake continue? Bridges and culverts are potential spots of accidents. The main reason is again sloppy design. Bridges and culverts should be much wider than the road itself. This is not only to provide for future expansion needs, but also for safety requirements. But we observe the opposite on our highways, bridges and culverts are narrower than the road, compelling the vehicles to converge towards the center of the road while approaching them. Slopes approaching bridges and culverts are not appropriately designed, reducing visibility. As a consequence, the inevitable is bound to happen. Naturally, these are potential accident spots. Isn't it time to fix them? Then there are the questions of break-vehicle lanes, road dividers, directional signs, warning signs, speed-limit signs, and similar standard items that road users are supposed to see. It is strange that in the 21st century Bangladesh, a stranger has to stop and ask for directions because road signs cannot guide the road user. When will we have them? Construction: Construction design of a highway must take into cognizance road safety and longevity parameters. There are many countries in the world that have problems of water-logging due to rain and flood like ours. How do they manage their highways? Two major problems for roads in Bangladesh are the soil condition and mouse holes. When mice bore holes in the highway, and it is easy in the alluvial soil, rain and flood water penetrate and damage the roads every year. Therefore, construction design must take this phenomenon into consideration. Road-filling should be done with sand at the bottom of the road foundation, followed by aggregates, then aggregates mixed with sand and cement, and final paving and finishing. This principle was followed while constructing the highway from Bogra to Dinajpur via Rangpur in the eighties. As to be expected, this highway lasted without maintenance for many years afterwards. But we tend not to learn from such positive experience, but prefer earth-filling and bituminous topping ensuring road usability for less than one season. What is the motivation here? As can be clearly seen from the above, because of the inability of leaders at the top, the expert beneath play the "catch me if you can" game and continue to get away with it. But this is only the "tip of the iceberg". There are umpteen other factors responsible for Bangladesh topping the world table in deaths on the go. How many more negative world tables do we want to lead? Of course, untrained drivers, drivers with fake license and drivers without license contribute to road accidents. Of course, unfit vehicles plying on the roads contribute to accidents. Of course, tendency to disobey the law contribute to accidents. Of course, reckless driving contributes to accidents. But why? Who own most of the trucks and buses in the country, particularly unfit ones? Have the media pundits ever try to dig that out? If they did, they would, in all likelihood, find that these are mostly owned by members belonging to the law enforcement agencies and political elements. If that be so, all the above reasons of road accidents are not difficult to explain. In such a reality, who will bell the cat? We can probably conclude by now that "there is more than meets the eye" as far as road safety in Bangladesh is concerned. One would hope that our ever vigilant media will dig down deeper into the problems in order to spearhead an informed movement to compel leaders to take steps towards improved road safety management. If the media fails this time, I for one do not see a viable alternative. So come on, let's get beyond scraping the surface, dig deeper and unearth the real reasons so that the responsible people are compelled to act. The writer is a management consultant and can be reached at email: akms@e-zonebd.com