Highway Police, who guard the 5,487 kilometre highways and about 4,165 kilometre of regional roads of the country, have submitted a research report to the home ministry seeking steps on 54 issues which they found behind accidents and occurrences on the roads.
The report also submitted investigates problems within the department itself. It cited the lack of workforce and other facilities at the highway police department as the chief weakness.
In the report, highway accidents were linked to 16 issues related to drivers, six issues related to vehicles, 13 issues related with roads, three issues related with documentation, two issues related with passers-by, four issues related with heavy cargo and 10 other problems.
Among the problems with drivers, mentionable were “racing,” overtaking, not maintaining the lane rules, underage driving, fake licences, unqualified drivers, violation of traffic rules, overtaking of passengers, taking drugs while driving, talking on cell phones while driving and driving without using alert lights.
Vehicles problems are slow vehicles on highways, low capacity headlights at night, vehicle design defects and technical problems. Besides, narrow roads, holes in highways, unauthorised speed breakers and absence of traffic lights were cited as some of the problems with roads.
Heavy cargo related issues were vehicles taking loads beyond their capacity and running on high speed with loaded vehicles.
On the other hand, the research report also mentioned that there was a lack of proper implementation of law, absence of regular monitoring on vehicles and not checking vehicles before starting journey that caused accidents. Besides, some drivers ran vehicles on high speed to make more trips per day.
Deputy Inspector General Asaduzzaman Mia of the highway police told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have already taken some initiatives to stop such accidents on the highway, identifying these reasons. We also submitted requests to the ministry to take action and accidents will be reduce if these steps are taken.”
He further said most of the road accidents happened on the Dhaka-Sylhet and Dhaka-Manikganj highways.
