EDITORIAL
No meaningful steps taken to curb accident casualties
A recent report published by Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, a passenger welfare body, paints a grim picture of the number of people killed in accidents in 2018 across the country. Road accidents took the biggest share of casualties with 7,221 deaths (93 percent) followed by train accidents and accidents on waterways.
We don't see any change in drivers' mindset and that is why they continue to drive recklessly and engage in risky overtaking. Authorities have not done enough to rectify faulty roads, and the BRTA, which is responsible for granting vehicle licences and overseeing fitness of vehicles, remains ineffective.
One must admit that there is a huge lack of awareness on roads and that it is not just on the part of drivers, but general people too. People do not have a good grasp of traffic laws, and those who do ignore them willfully. The end result of course is that the death toll keeps rising with each passing year. We need to do something about this and it requires a two-pronged approach. While technical problems of roads can be solved easily, changing mindsets requires a national campaign that will not fizzle out in a week or a month.
Implementation of laws, again, is not a stopgap measure by introducing “traffic week” or “traffic month”. Rather, it requires a change in mindset so that enforcement of the law takes place in every area: implementing the traffic rules, granting of licences to people who actually pass BRTA driving tests, educating people to cross roads safely, using signals before changing lanes, disallowing unfit vehicles from plying the roads, among other things. It is a tall order but there can be no shortcuts when we try to bring order out of total chaos and each of us must do our part so that there are fewer avoidable deaths on our roads.
Courtesy: The Daily Star Jan 27, 2019
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