There is not much more that we can say about the sheer ubiquity of road accidents in Bangladesh that this publication itself has not already said -- the fact that monthly reports by watchdog organizations seemingly record higher and higher numbers testify to how our road safety issue has become a matter of national reckoning.
Indeed, the recent grim statistics coming in from Comilla alone are nothing if not a cause for alarm, with 141 lives extinguished in just eight months on its highways, while the report of 20 deaths at a single U-turn in Padua Bazar is a further damning indictment, not just of reckless drivers, but of a system that has repeatedly chosen neglect over action.
The causes cited by the Highway Police are certainly familiar to us all: Reckless speeding, wrong-way driving, illegal U-turns -- such driving behaviours are symptoms of a profound governance failure and point to a transport sector riddled with unskilled, unlicensed drivers, and a law enforcement apparatus hamstrung by limited manpower and perhaps even limited will. These are all part of an infrastructure so callously designed that it seems almost antagonistic to the sanctity of life itself.
In 2018, Bangladesh bore witness to a nationwide student-led movement demanding safer roads, which proved that bringing discipline to our roads and highways was possible. That movement was a turning point that forced the government’s hand, leading to the passage of the Road Transport Act 2018, which promised stricter penalties for reckless motorists.
Six years on, the promise has evaporated. The law’s implementation has been weak, inconsistent, and seemingly abandoned. The powerful transport associations, a key factor in the ecosystem of impunity, continue to operate with minimal oversight, meaning that the same deadly patterns persist, unabated and unaddressed in a system which has utterly failed the people.
The lives lost in Comilla, and the thousands lost nationwide every year, are a testament to this systemic failure. Until and unless the administration takes steps to uproot this system and transform it wholly, we will keep counting bodies on the road to nowhere.