Making road travel safer

Yearly reports on the fatalities from road accidents show how deadlier travel on the roads and highways of the country is becoming with the passage of time. Unsurprisingly, in various literatures in this connection, the country's roads are often described as veritable death traps for both travellers and unsuspecting pedestrians. Against this backdrop, a report on casualties related to road accidents as provided by one of the non-government bodies keeping track of the issue, namely, Passenger Welfare Association of Bangladesh (PWAB), published recently in the media can be a case in point. It says that last year, 7,902 people died in accidents on the country's roads and highways alone. To add to that the deaths from railway and waterway accidents, the fatality rate comes to about more than 23 a day while travelling by various modes of land and water transports in the country. This is no doubt shocking seeing that over the years precious little has been done by the authorities concerned to make travel safer for the people. A breakdown of the PWAB statistics would further show which types of vehicles are lately contributing more to the fatality figure than others.
Consider that out of the close to 8,000 deaths from road accidents, motorbikes, which were involved in over 2,000 accidents, claimed 2031 lives. This is about 27 per cent, or nearly one third of all the deaths connected to road accidents. The unwieldy swarms of motorbikes at every road crossing of the capital city alone speak volumes for what a growing threat these motorised two-wheelers are becoming to road safety in the country. But there are no visible efforts to curb the menace. On the contrary, the numbers of motorbikes including easy bikes and other such risky vehicles getting registered from the relevant government department have increased four to fivefold in the last nine years, say reports. It is not just motorbikes, the number of privately-owned vehicles are also rising by leaps and bounds rendering the roads further congested, a factor also, to a large extent, to blame for the rising number of road accidents and attendant death tolls every year.
But to all appearances, both the public and those in authority have accepted it all, as though, as a fact of life. But one might well recall at this point 2018's movement launched by school children to ensure road safety. Admittedly, the Road Transport Act, 2018 was a direct outcome of that movement. Later, the government enacted the Road Safety Rules, 2022 for, what it said, better implementation of the Road Transport Act, 2018. These Act and Rules on road safety and discipline are great on paper, but those hardly help things when it comes to the facts on the ground.
For instance, 2022, the very year that the Road Safety Rules, 2022 was enacted, the country witnessed the highest ever road casualty figure at close to 10,000 deaths from over 52,000 road accidents. Even so, this is of little comfort for the concerned quarters as the year that followed (2023) saw fewer deaths from road crashes. Such fluctuations of the casualty figures only point to how unpredictable the roads and highways of the country are when it comes to road safety. Therefore, the point is to implement the road safety rules to their letter and spirit so that the roads are safer and more predictable for travellers.