THURSDAY midnight's head-on collision between an auto-tempo and a minibus on the Chittagong-Rangamati highway, which left 11 people killed, most of them in their twenties, better not be set aside as just another tragic accident.

Fate runs its own course, some people may say. Others would wish the victims had not taken the trip, that, too, in an auto-tempo, in the first place. Such a resignation to fate might bring some solace to the friends and families of the hapless bunch of youth; however, it would also bury the crucial issue of road safety. We don't want to see their deaths go in vain. When people die at regular intervals in road mishaps across the country, there is more to it than just a stroke of misfortune. There has to be some systemic failures somewhere in the country's overall road safety management mechanism. The question is whether we have any such mechanism in place or not.

Road safety concerns by and large have remained confined to seminars and symposia rather than being addressed at the ground level. Some measures adopted in this regard over the years have more often than not been cosmetic, missing the target by miles. There are crucial issues that need to be tackled before we can think of streamlining the sector. For example, by the communications minister's own admission, half the number of drivers of different motorised vehicles do not have genuine licences. Some people tend to believe the figure could be still higher. It is also common knowledge that a substantial percentage of the vehicles is flawed and runs on fabricated fitness certificates. We have let our roads out to flawed vehicles and unlicensed drivers through the corruption of the concerned government authorities. This is just one aspect of the intricate road management matrix. There are more. Poor conditions of the roads, inadequate lighting on the highways, lack of highway patrol, non-enforcement of traffic rules and regulations, inoperative traffic signals ... the list can go on and on.

As our hearts reach out to the grieving families and friends of the hapless youths, who came out of their homes for a cricket match only to return as corpses, we ask the government to immediately pay attention to the overall road safety question. Fatalities in road accidents in Bangladesh rank among the highest in the world. The government cannot just blame it on fate.