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Editorial

Road safety still a distant dream

Take steps to stop reckless driving


Bangladeshpost
Published : 22 Oct 2021 09:34 PM

With a fresh vow to stop plying unfit vehicles and unhealthy race on the roads to avoid deadly road crash, the National Road Safety Day was observed in the country on Friday. The number of vehicles like bus, truck, covered van and cars on streets has increased significantly with the increase of developed road infrastructure in the country. We think uncontrolled speed of these vehicles is one of the major reasons of fatal road disaster. 

On Friday at least three people were killed in a road accident on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway at Sadar upazila in Feni district. A total of 3,095 people were killed in 3,259 road crashes in the first seven months of this year and it was over 40 percent higher than that of the same period last year, says a police study.


Both pedestrians and drivers 

must properly follow traffic 

rules to avoid road accidents 


Desperate racing tendency among drivers and reckless driving; contractual leasing of vehicles to drivers or conductors on daily basis; employing drivers without licences; lack of awareness among pedestrians and small vehicle drivers, especially motorcyclists; overloading and overtaking tendency of drivers violating traffic rules are causing serious road accident. Besides, long-time driving without any interval; absence of enforcement of law to stop plying of unfit vehicles; violation of traffic rules on long routes; increase in motorcycles and three-wheelers on roads and highways; and carrying passengers and goods in locally-made motorised vehicles are also taking lives of people on road every day.

The government has taken different programme for developing and modernising road infrastructure to make the roads safer and decrease causality of road accident to half. During the AL government tenure, highways have been upgraded to 22,428 kilometer and of them, 632km highways have been upgraded to four-lane or above and works are underway to upgrade 647km highways to six-lane.

It is essential to abide by speed limit to stop loss of life and property. All concerned will have to work with sincerity for making the road safety programmes successful. Besides, the mentality of earning some money by fixing the vehicles somehow will also have to be discarded.

All concerned including pedestrians and drivers must properly follow traffic rules to avoid road accidents. We must use underpasses, overbridges and zebra crossings to cross the roads to help reduce the road mishaps.