Deaths on the roads
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Shamsher Chowdhury
I do not know where to begin. While prices of essentials are becoming dearer by the day, the cost of human lives is getting cheaper by the day. As it is, we lose valuable lives due to natural calamities and disasters every year. That alone is bad enough, deaths on the roads are hard to reconcile. This is purely manmade. Its spread now covers the entire length and breadth of the country. In less than a week ago yet another innocent child died in the capital. Worst of all, the mother, with another of her daughters badly injured in the same incident, was seen lying on the floor of a city hospital uncared for and unattended.
How much more cruel and insensitive can we be? Every time an incident like this takes place we are handed down statistics of how many fake licences are there in the hands of the drivers. The newspapers have also printed reports galore about how many defective and unfit vehicles are there on the streets. Despite all these tragic deaths, no one in the authoirty has ever come up with any real concern about the role of our police in all this.
Deaths on the roads have become a regular affair in recent times. Yet none in the government apparently thinks much of it. Why should they? Police in this country consider them to be invincible, so are all other law enforcing agencies. They can do no wrong. Every time an accident takes place you see two photographs in the media, particularly the print media, where it is shown the driver of the vehicle involved in the incident being led by a police with a rope tied around his waste and a gruesome photograph of the victim lying in a pool of blood on the street.
Thereafter, we learn from the media about warning of severe actions against faulty vehicles and the unlicensed drivers. The matter is soon forgotten until the next "death" occurs. How very convenient! Months pass by and yet little or no action is taken in dealing with the root causes of the problem like removing the decades-old unfit vehicles from plying on the roads and cracking the whip on the this business of fake driving licences. It is alleged that most defective buses and vehicles that operate on a commercial basis in the city and elsewhere are, in reality, owned by a section of the police. Buses are often seen given 'go' signal to proceed while the red signal is on and other vehicles are not allowed to move until the green light appears or the traffic police pleases to give the 'go' signal. You can clearly see the "brotherhood" that exists between the bus drivers and the concerned traffic police on duty.
We do not appreciate the economists and statisticians who simply present the status of a situation as good or for bad but do not suggest to the concerned agencies to take appropriate measures to rectify a deteriorating state of affairs except in a capsule form. Well, we guess that is what the statisticians are for. It will still be an interesting exercise to carry out a survey year-wise and find out how many people have died at the hands of killer drivers on the roads of the country. In this context, it may be mentioned that we already have had enough of seminars and workshops involving specialists on the subject, thinkers and planners of all shades and opinjons that produced no tangible results.
This is so, perhaps because the administration is little interested in improving the conditions on the ground. It is more interested in planning and executing long-term mega projects. Mega projects mean mega money to play with and play around!
There is, perhaps, no country in the region other than Bangladesh where so many people die on a daily basis on the roads in traffic accidents. Of late, we seem to have very little regard for human lives. People are losing their lives at the hands of terrorists, in extreme vandalism in public places and educational institutions, and at the hands of muggers. And there are these other deaths, or shall I say 'murders', taking place while in custody of the police or the BDR or in so-called cross-fire incidents. We are afraid, if things are allowed to go on like this, Bangladesh will slowly become a peace-time mini-killing field.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail:
chowdhury.shamsher@yahoo.com
I do not know where to begin. While prices of essentials are becoming dearer by the day, the cost of human lives is getting cheaper by the day. As it is, we lose valuable lives due to natural calamities and disasters every year. That alone is bad enough, deaths on the roads are hard to reconcile. This is purely manmade. Its spread now covers the entire length and breadth of the country. In less than a week ago yet another innocent child died in the capital. Worst of all, the mother, with another of her daughters badly injured in the same incident, was seen lying on the floor of a city hospital uncared for and unattended.
How much more cruel and insensitive can we be? Every time an incident like this takes place we are handed down statistics of how many fake licences are there in the hands of the drivers. The newspapers have also printed reports galore about how many defective and unfit vehicles are there on the streets. Despite all these tragic deaths, no one in the authoirty has ever come up with any real concern about the role of our police in all this.
Deaths on the roads have become a regular affair in recent times. Yet none in the government apparently thinks much of it. Why should they? Police in this country consider them to be invincible, so are all other law enforcing agencies. They can do no wrong. Every time an accident takes place you see two photographs in the media, particularly the print media, where it is shown the driver of the vehicle involved in the incident being led by a police with a rope tied around his waste and a gruesome photograph of the victim lying in a pool of blood on the street.
Thereafter, we learn from the media about warning of severe actions against faulty vehicles and the unlicensed drivers. The matter is soon forgotten until the next "death" occurs. How very convenient! Months pass by and yet little or no action is taken in dealing with the root causes of the problem like removing the decades-old unfit vehicles from plying on the roads and cracking the whip on the this business of fake driving licences. It is alleged that most defective buses and vehicles that operate on a commercial basis in the city and elsewhere are, in reality, owned by a section of the police. Buses are often seen given 'go' signal to proceed while the red signal is on and other vehicles are not allowed to move until the green light appears or the traffic police pleases to give the 'go' signal. You can clearly see the "brotherhood" that exists between the bus drivers and the concerned traffic police on duty.
We do not appreciate the economists and statisticians who simply present the status of a situation as good or for bad but do not suggest to the concerned agencies to take appropriate measures to rectify a deteriorating state of affairs except in a capsule form. Well, we guess that is what the statisticians are for. It will still be an interesting exercise to carry out a survey year-wise and find out how many people have died at the hands of killer drivers on the roads of the country. In this context, it may be mentioned that we already have had enough of seminars and workshops involving specialists on the subject, thinkers and planners of all shades and opinjons that produced no tangible results.
This is so, perhaps because the administration is little interested in improving the conditions on the ground. It is more interested in planning and executing long-term mega projects. Mega projects mean mega money to play with and play around!
There is, perhaps, no country in the region other than Bangladesh where so many people die on a daily basis on the roads in traffic accidents. Of late, we seem to have very little regard for human lives. People are losing their lives at the hands of terrorists, in extreme vandalism in public places and educational institutions, and at the hands of muggers. And there are these other deaths, or shall I say 'murders', taking place while in custody of the police or the BDR or in so-called cross-fire incidents. We are afraid, if things are allowed to go on like this, Bangladesh will slowly become a peace-time mini-killing field.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail:
chowdhury.shamsher@yahoo.com