To say that the roads and highways in Bangladesh lack discipline would be an understatement of the highest order. At the more inoffensive end lies our capital city’s monstrous levels of traffic, which sees cars and vehicles move at a pace that is less than the average human walking speed; on the most extreme end lies the sheer death and destruction wrought on by road accidents, which seemingly not a day goes by without an incident making the headlines.
A recent report by the Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity testifies to just how much our roads have become a brutal killing field, claiming an average of 22 lives every single day for over a decade. With close to 90,000 deaths, and over 150,000 injuries spread across close to 63,000 separate road accidents, the statistics are indeed appalling. On the other hand, citing an estimate made by the World Bank, such carnage is paired with an economic haemorrhage, with intolerable congestion sucking Tk 98,000 crore from the economy annually leading to a daily loss of 3.2 million working hours.
This dual crisis of safety and efficiency is perhaps the most glaring symptom of governance failure in our daily lives, and it demands immediate intervention by the incumbent administration.
The first and most immediate task is the unyielding enforcement of existing traffic laws. The Road Transport Act 2018 exists on paper, but its potential is neutered by a blatant lack of implementation. The law’s failure, as rightly pointed out by rights groups, stems from the fact that it was crafted by ignoring the voices of civil society and the very people it was meant to protect. This needs to be rectified.
However, enforcement alone is insufficient if those responsible remain untouched. For far too long, powerful, politically-affiliated transport association leaders have operated with impunity, creating a system where corruption trumps public safety. Investigations into major crashes must be swift, transparent, and should pursue accountability not just for the driver behind the wheel, but for the owners and association chiefs whose policies and pressure create an environment where recklessness is profitable.
The web of problems our roads and highways are tangled in cannot be fixed overnight, but with the right investment, in terms of both time and resources, we can indeed make our roads both safer and more efficient.
