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Dangerous stretch

Sarail on Dhaka-Sylhet highway turns into an accident-prone area; 37 killed in about 5 years

Wasim Bin Habib and Sheikh Md. Shahidul Islam
Deadly road accidents on the 40 kilometres of the Dhaka-Sylhet highway stretch from Ashuganj to Sarail upazila in Brahmanbaria have become so frequent over the past few years that it has turned into a death trap.
According to reports published in this newspaper, at least 37 people have been killed in 18 road crashes in Sarail upazila alone over the last four and a half years.
In the latest incident, five people died as a Dhaka-bound truck from Sylhet collided head-on with a CNG-run auto-rickshaw in
the same upazila on Tuesday.
Reasons behind such recurring accidents on this particular patch of the two-lane highway include rampant violation of traffic rules and flaws in the road's design, experts said.
Among the flaws are frequent, sharp bends and unplanned speed breakers on the road. The marking on most of these speed bumps have worn out, and they are not often visible, which results in many accidents. Also, the road is too narrow for the increasing number of vehicles plying the road, they added.
Sources in the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) say there are eight speed breakers in the accident-prone 40km stretch.
All the speed breakers, save the ones near the rail gates and bridges, are totally unsafe and illegal. In some cases, locals built some of those on their own without taking any permission from the authorities, Shyamal Bhattacharya, executive engineer of the RHD in Brahmanbaria, told The Daily Star.
"Accidents happen mostly because of these speed breakers," he said, adding that the RHD removed five speed breakers from the area recently.
According to several officials of highway police, road accidents are very
frequent on the highway near Shohagpur, Bahadurpur, Bertoia, Biswa Road, Kuttapara, Islamabad, Bariura, Shahbazpur, Rampur and Islampur.
Most accidents involve CNG-run three-wheelers, as they often flip over while crossing these speed bumps.
Many unregistered CNG-run autorickshaws and improvised vehicles still ply the highway, although the government has banned those, said police and locals.
Saidul Islam Khan, a traffic inspector in Brahmanbaria, said the ever increasing number of vehicles operating on the highway was making things worse.
He said at least 54 traffic policemen were needed to maintain traffic in the area. They only have 27.