Road Transport Bill gets JS nod

Parliament last night passed two separate bills including the much-anticipated Road Transport Act-2018 amid criticisms over lenient punishments for deaths caused by reckless driving.

The other bill was aimed at recognising the top Qawmi madrasa degree Dawra-e-Hadith as equivalent to postgraduate degrees in Islamic studies and Arabic. (Story on page 3)

The road transport bill moved by Minister Obaidul Quader was unanimously passed by voice vote with Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury in the chair.

The Road Transport Act-2018 has provisions of five years' imprisonment for causing death by reckless driving, a punishment deemed lenient by road safety campaigners.

The development comes over a month after the cabinet approved the draft law.

The new law would replace the Motor Vehicles Ordinance, 1983.

In March last year, the cabinet approved in principle the proposed legislation -- Road Transport Act -- but it remained shelved at the law ministry for vetting amid opposition by transport owners and workers to some of its provisions.

The government recently decided to place the draft act before the cabinet following the recent student agitation for road safety sparked by the death of two college students on the road in July.

According to the law, if anybody causes an accident by reckless and negligent driving, and kills or injures someone seriously, such person would face a maximum sentence of five years in jail or a fine of Tk 5 lakh or both.

However, if it is found that a driver has deliberately killed anyone or not averted a killing in a road accident, the matter would fall under either section 302 (murder) or 304 (culpable homicide) of the Penal Code, according to the explanation of the proposed act by the law minister.

The maximum punishment under section 302 of the Penal Code is the death penalty while it is life imprisonment under section 304.

Road safety campaigners have long been demanding that the government increase the punishment to at least 10 years.

The act is rather soft on transport owners, as it holds drivers solely responsible for deaths and casualties in road crashes, the campaigners have been saying.

They have long been saying that it was impossible to ensure safe roads by letting the owners off the hook and punishing the workers or drivers alone.

“We think that transport owners have been exempted from shouldering certain liabilities because of lobbying and negotiations,” Mozammel Hoque Chowdhury, secretary general of Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, told The Daily Star about the draft of the law on an earlier occasion.

Defending the new law, Obaidul Quader yesterday told the House that the bill contained the provision of death penalty for deliberate killing.

The law also has a provision for assigning 12 points to every driver. The driver will lose points for offences. When the points come down to zero, the driver's licence will be cancelled.

A driver will lose points for nine types of offences, including drunk driving, illegal overtaking, reckless and dangerous driving, and violation of traffic rules and speed limits.

As per the law, drivers must have an education not below the eighth grade.

A financial assistance fund will be created to provide compensation or medical treatment costs to victims of crashes.

The government, through gazette notifications, will set working hours for drivers, conductors, helpers and other staffers in line with the labour law.

The maximum punishment for driving without licence or driving a vehicle without fitness certificate are six-months' imprisonment or a fine of Tk 25,000 or both.

The maximum punishment for driving an unregistered vehicle is six-month imprisonment or a fine of Tk 50,000 or both.