Death and destruction from road accidents has long been a blight on our country, with numbers and statistics that seemingly climb ever higher year on year.
While a number of initiatives have been taken in the last few years, including the Road Transport Act 2018 -- a law that was passed after the historic student-led movement demanding safer roads -- they have resulted in absolutely no improvements to the status quo whatsoever.
One of the key reasons behind this is a lack of both pro-activity and enforcement of existing laws when it comes to road safety and traffic regulation. Which is why the Highway Police's recent identification of more than 50 points along the Dhaka-Sylhet highway as being prone to a high number of road accidents is a genuine step in the right direction to curb the number of accidents on our roads and highways.
According to the Highway Police, motorists face high risk of accidents when travelling through these key points for reasons including unsafe curves, obstacles in the line of sight, and narrow roads.
While reckless drivers have been the common thread in most road accidents, the Highway Police's findings indicate that there are also severe faults within the very infrastructure that facilitates vehicles in our country. For the administration to simply sit on these findings and do nothing to address the problems which are clearly leading to road accidents in these spots would be absolutely unacceptable.
However, we must never forget that, at the core of such accidents are reckless bus drivers -- often lacking licenses -- who have no business operating such vehicles. These bus drivers are further enabled by the owners of their companies to compete with each other on the roads which foments an incredibly dangerous environment for pedestrians and other motorists alike.
The government needs to clamp down on these unscrupulous bus company owners before anything else.