It has been less than two weeks into the new year and the nation has already witnessed several instances of death by road accident, with the most recent being that of a college student who was killed -- and several others injured -- along the Dhaka-Chittagong route in Daudkandi yesterday. Following the accident, several classmates of the deceased blocked the road in protest.
As a nation, we have found ourselves in this situation far too many times before, after all, the historic movement for safer roads was led by students, a movement that exposed the numerous flaws and holes in the administration’s road safety measures on the ground.
According to the Road Safety Foundation’s last report, close to 500 people lost their lives while almost 700 were injured in the month of September 2022. But such numbers and statistics are slowly but steadily losing their value as death and destruction from road accidents are all but treated as a way of life in Bangladesh, which is incredibly unfortunate.
It seems that, no matter how high the numbers go each passing year, the only natural reaction from both the administration and the wider public is apathy. This is a slippery slope that will surely mean the end for public safety, not just on the road but in general, from infrastructural failings to accidental fires.
We can no longer treat this as the status quo -- it is high time we as a public started demanding drastic measures taken by the authorities to curb the number of road accidents.
Hold those responsible for road safety and traffic law violations to the fullest extent of the law, end the culture of impunity afforded to unscrupulous bus company owners who pit their drivers against each other to act as recklessly as possible on the roads.
Road safety is public safety, and failure to ensure the former means an utter disregard for the latter.
