Bangabandhu Bridge: Poor visibility causes another pile-up
A five-vehicle pile-up on Bangabandhu Bridge in poor visibility early yesterday left one person dead and five others injured. Drivers and locals claimed that the lights on the bridge were off when the accident happened amid dense fog but the bridge authorities maintain that those were on.
On January 9 last year, at least six people, including the son of Land Minister Shamsur Rahman, were killed during a 16-vehicle pile-up on the bridge amid dense fog. The Daily Star found that all 153 sodium lights on the bridge were off during the accident.
Yesterday, a bamboo-laden truck hit the median on the bridge about 200 metres away from east end toll plaza around 6:45am. The truck spun and partially blocked the dual carriageway.
Unable to see the stationary truck in the dense fog, four other trucks, a few of which were carrying logs, rammed it, said police, drivers and bridge officials.
The pile-up left Shafiqul Islam, helper of a log-laden truck and an inhabitant of Joypurhat, dead on the spot, said Asabur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Bangabandhu Bridge East Police Station.
Vehicular movement over the bridge was suspended for two hours causing tailbacks on the both ends of the bridge.
While talking to journalists, several accident victims, drivers, and their assistants claimed that the lights on the bridge were off when the accident happened and nothing could be seen in the fog.
“I saw all lights of the bridge off after reaching the accident spot around 7:30am,” a local journalist Sohel Talukder told The Daily Star.
However, Wasim Ali, an assistant engineer of Bangabandhu Bridge site of Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA), claimed that all the sodium lights were on.
He said the lights are turned on and off automatically by sensors and that the lights turn on when the sun goes down in the evening and turns off when it is up.
The accident happened at 6:47am and the lights were on and they had turned off at 7:06am when the sun was up, Wasim claimed before The Daily Star.
However, OC Asabur could not say for certain whether the lights were on or off during the accident.
When asked why vehicles were allowed on the bridge when visibility was so poor, Wasim said a visibility measuring device was installed on the bridge.
If the device measures visibility over 40 metres, vehicles are allowed to use the bridge. When the minimum visibility drops below that, the device triggers an alarm.
“Even 10 minutes before the accident, the visibility was around 50 metres. But it suddenly dropped to 40 metres and below. We then instantly suspended vehicular movement. But by this time many vehicles were on the bridge and some of those were involved in the accident,” he told The Daily Star.
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