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Traffic rules left to the mercy of drivers!

Syed Fattahul Alim
The big question that arises here is, will the killing on the roads stop with the arrest of and punishment to the driver responsible for the accident, as demanded by the Buet students?**
IT was not long ago that another post appeared about "killer buses" in this column. In fact, such write-ups in newspaper columns appear after a road mishap occurs that are able to spark widespread opprobrium and protest as well as a flood of compassion for the victim. Otherwise, reports on the death from reckless driving usually go without much furore over them.
The road accident of May 27, in which a Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet) fresher was crushed to death by a bus while it was backing at Azimpur crossing, for example, was one such mishap of consequence.
The Buet students took out angry protest demonstrations, blocked traffic movement on roads through Buet campus, Plassey and Nilkhet areas for long hours, damaged vehicles plying through those roads and made demands like building of an entrance gate to the area named after the mishap victim, arrest of the driver and helper of the killer bus, compensation for the victim from bus owner, and so on and so forth.
With this fateful road crash, followed by another on the Dhaka-Narayanganj link road on May 29 that killed a garment worker, we have again been tumbled to the issue of death on the roads. But this new awareness about such a very grave threat to our lives on the roads may again be consigned to oblivion and negligent bus operators resume their rash driving and continue to send unsuspecting bystanders or pedestrians to their death unless something is done to stop the gratuitous murders on the road.
Before entering into any further discussion on finding a way out of the problem, it would be worthwhile to have a quick look at what is happening on the roads all across the country.
The Bangladesh Road Transport Association's (BRTA) record shows that last year the number of road mishaps in the country was 3,381 and the casualty figure was 2,958. Or, in other words, for every 100 accidents, there were 87.48 deaths, while the proportion of grievous injuries from these road mishaps was 65.74.
In the year before (2008), on the other hand, 3,765 people died from 4,442 road accidents (i.e., 84.75 people died per 100
mishaps), and those receiving serious injuries numbered 2,720, i.e., the percentage of severe injuries from those mishaps was 61.44. The last two years' road mishaps speak volumes for what a veritable death-traps the roads of the country have become.
In the capital city alone, some 45 people die every month due to road accidents. Dhaka Metropolitan police (DMP) Commissioner A.K.M. Shahidul Hoque says that most of the bus drivers of the city have fake driving licences. Obviously, there is hardly any guarantee that those fake licence holders did ever have any training in driving before they took control of the buses.
So, neither the passengers who travel in the city buses nor the pedestrians, or even bystanders, at a bus stop are safe from those bus drivers. And it has exactly been the case with the Buet student, who was just standing at the bus stop quite unaware of the intention of the driver sitting at the steering wheel of the bus nearby.
The big question that arises here is, will the killing on the roads stop with the arrest of and punishment to the driver responsible for the accident, as demanded by the Buet students? The main culprit (the driver) no doubt must get his comeuppance. But then can we be assured that the roads of the city or elsewhere in the country will become safer after that?
Let us have a look at how these bus
drivers respect traffic rules in the city. It will be observed that they are continuously violating the traffic rules by stopping their buses wherever they like, and dropping and picking up passengers as dictated by their sweet will. And in the act, they often defy the traffic police or, in the worst-case scenario, the traffic police looks the other way as the driver breaks the law.
These are not cases of mere coincidence. It is alleged that each of the 150 bus companies operating their city services has to pay Tk.100,000 per month to the traffic police. The total amount thus collected every month would amount to Tk.15 million. And if that is really the case, then why should a driver, whether he is fake or genuine, care at all to honour the traffic rules?
Small wonder that the bus drivers with their fake licences break the traffic laws with gay abandon, and commuters or pedestrians like Shamrat of Buet have to die unnatural deaths about every other day on the roads!
In the circumstances, what is the answer to all these unwarranted deaths on the roads?
There is no alternative to stricter laws to punish the errant drivers. At the same time, the departments that issue driving licences and control the movement of traffic on the roads have also to be rid of corruption in order that the traffic laws could be applied effectively.
Syed Fattahul Alim Is a senior journalist