Jaw-scowling roads

Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster, Jaws produces an overpowering sense of fear. All because the great white shark bares its rows of long and pointed teeth in so menacing a manner. Of late, people in the capital may have been rudely reminded of that watery beast on its paved roads. The jaws first made its fearful appearance on Hare Road. Soon other roads are expected to terrorise people with the exposed jaws. In the Spielberg film, the jaws-wielding shark was a man-eater in beach water. Here the metal jaws protruding from roads lie in wait for puncturing tyres of vehicles coming on the wrong lanes.
The first casualty of the device was however an ambulance carrying a critically ill patient. Coming all the way from Khulna, the ambulance failed to negotiate the heavy traffic jam in the weekend afternoon and its driver unwittingly tried to make a short-cut to a city hospital through the wrong lane. The traffic police did not warn him of the danger lying ahead and all four wheels of his ambulance was duly punctured by the shark-like teeth.
It surely was a rude shock for all who were travelling by the ambulance. The intolerable heat forced attendants of the patient to bring out the patient on the ambulance stretcher for emergency attention on the footpath. Mercifully perhaps nothing worse happened. Had it been the case, the incident would have made screaming headlines. How the ambulance freed itself from the retractable spikes or the patient was taken to hospital could not be known but it surely was a harrowing experience. Above everything else, the patient suffered more than his due share.
But why are the jaws yawning on roads of Dhaka? Had motorists mended their ways and followed the traffic rules in their letter and spirit, no one would have even thought of installing the retractable spikes on roads in the first place. But because motorists often take the wrong lane risking accidents as also traffic jam involving their vehicles and those coming in the proper direction, the traffic division of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) came up with this novel but intimidating idea. The specialty of these menacing teeth is that they allow vehicles coming from the right direction to pass by sleeping into their chambers but stand defiantly to confront the vehicles coming from the opposite direction. The result is that the latter trying to take undue advantage from the wrong lane get the tyres of their wheels punctured.
A drastic and perhaps an exasperated measure, it is meant to teach motorists violating traffic rules a lesson. So far as its merit is concerned, no one is expected to argue against it. But have drivers been adequately made aware of the danger from the new device? In a country where street bumps are not brightly marked, ample signs are not conveniently placed in order to warn of the various dangers including sharp turns and twists of roads ahead, the authorities are unlikely to bring this fact to people's notice through a public campaign well before its installation. But it is incumbent on them to make people familiar with the new device put in place.
Meanwhile, a few of the sharp teeth of the device on Hare Road have disappeared or broken. This may happen because it was placed there on an experimental basis. The manufacturer of the device would now be required to look for stronger metals capable of withstanding the stress and strain. Better it would be if motorists and others render the device redundant by voluntarily following traffic and other rules, which is fundamental to making a disciplined nation.