While much has changed and is changing in the two months under the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, it is unfortunate that when it comes to ensuring safety on our roads, we remain as abysmal as ever.
Indeed, according to the Road Safety Foundation, there were 426 reported deaths from accidents in Bangladesh in the month of September alone. That we have over a dozen deaths daily on our roads cannot and should not be an acceptable norm for our nation.
That these are reported numbers, and the fact that there could be many more accidents that simply go unreported, should be a concern for everybody
The foundation listed 10 causes for the accidents, and they are nothing that we are not familiar with - from faulty vehicles, to unfit drivers lacking proper experience, to the entire system regarding safety and security on our roads with proper rules and regulations being in absolute shambles.
The question is this: Will we continue to accept a nation where we lose hundreds of lives weekly to accidents, or will we actually do something about it?
It is truly shocking that, despite all of the talks of reforms, we are no closer to fixing our broken system when it comes to ensuring safety and security on our roads. That the capital city of Dhaka cannot have functioning traffic lights, that it still has vehicles taking the opposite side of the road to travel, and that people continue to pay no heed to basic traffic regulations tell us that we are a long way away from having safer roads.
A nation’s progress can not be measured only by its wealth, but instead by the quality of its citizens’ lives. As we speak about building a new and better Bangaldesh, let us not put aside the importance of ensuring safer roads so that we do not keep losing so many to avoidable accidents.