Lack of service roads, underpasses, overpasses and alternative transports is an important reason behind fatal highway accidents involving illegal three-wheeler, slow-moving and non-motorised vehicles in the country, road safety campaigners and experts say.
Reckless driving and lack of awareness on the part of the road users also play an important role behind these accidents, they point out.
On August 25, 15 people were killed and 20 injured when a human hauler was trying to overtake another vehicle amid drizzles and collided with a bus on the Rajshahi-Pabna Highway at Lalpur in Natore.
Besides, 11 people were killed in bus-human hauler collision in Narsingdi and seven were killed in bus-CNG auto-rickshaw collision in Feni.
Auto-rickshaws, easy bikes, battery-run rickshaws, Nasimon and Karimon accounted for 24 per cent road accidents during the last Eid-ul-Azha, says a report of Bangladesh Passenger Welfare Association.
These vehicles, all in use as public transports in rural and sub-urban areas, now easily get on highways defying government ban as people have no alternatives, experts say.
Currently there is only one service road along with Hatikumrul-Bonpara highway and only three underpasses at Dhaka-Chittagong Highway in the country, Roads and Highways Department chief engineer Ebne Alam Hasan says.
Road transport and minister Obaidul Quader on September 5 at a meeting admitted that so many people were dying in road accidents and blamed small vehicles such as easy bike, battery-run rickshaws and reckless motorcycles for these fatalities.
According to Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology’s Accident Research Institute, at least 56 per cent of the road accidents take place on national and regional highways.
On August 1, 2015 RTB ministry imposed a ban on three-wheeler and non-motorised vehicles on 22 national highways.
The High Court on August 3, 2015 directed the road transport ministry and the police to keep unfit motor vehicles off the roads across the country but the directive was never enforced.
Home affairs ministry in 2010 in a directive put a ban on unregistered battery-run three-wheelers ‘easy bikes’.Thus these vehicles are often getting on national and regional highways.
University Grants Commission professor M Anwar Hossian, who headed a sub-committee in 2011 to make a set of recommendations on road safety, told New Age about acute crisis of service roads along and overpasses and underpasses at highways.
‘Moreover, people and drivers go for short cuts instead of using adjacent intersections and other facilities,’ he mentioned. BUET ARI assistant professor Kazi Md Shifun Newaz observed that not only the drivers but also the road users were responsible for crossing highways risking their lives.
‘People mostly carried goods from one area to another area on these vehicles,’ the teacher said, adding, ‘The government has to provide them with alternative vehicles like minibuses or pickup vans to cross the highways.’
RHD chief engineer Ebne Alam Hasan said that works on service roads, underpasses and overpasses were ongoing on South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation Road Connectivity project 1 to improve Joydevpur Chandra-Tangail-Elenga road to a 4-lane highway and project 2 to improve Elenga-Hatikumrul-Rangpur road to a 4-lane highway.
Later the same infrastructures would be constructed in SASEC Road Connectivity Project 3 to improve Rangpur-Burimari road to a 4-Lane highway, he added.
Deputy inspector general of highway police Md Atiqul Islam said these vehicles crossed highways at such places where there were no law enforcers.
- Courtesy: New Age/ Sep 10, 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment