Reducing Fatalities on Roads: Aim gets lowered
As road safety authority failed to achieve the target to halve the number of road accident fatalities by last year, it is now going to extend the deadline by another 10 years.
As part of a new action plan, the authority wants to reduce 20 to 25 percent of road accident fatalities and injuries by the end of the 2024 by setting the National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan-2021-2024 into motion.
A draft of the action plan has already been prepared and is expected to be placed before today's meeting of National Road Safety Council (NRSC) for approval, said Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) Chairman Nur Mohammad Mazumder while speaking to The Daily Star yesterday.
Asked whether they would evaluate why they couldn't meet the target, he said that could be done later.
Like the previous action plan, the fresh one would have nine individual sectors to address the road safety issues of Bangladesh, which witnessed two major movements in the past three years for ensuring road safety, officials said.
Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader, also the chief of the NRSC, will preside over the meeting at the BRTA's head office in the capital.
Several ministers, secretaries, leaders of transport associations, and experts and road safety campaigners are the members of the apex body formed in 1995 to take policy decisions over road safety issues.
DRAFT ACTION PLAN
Since 1997, total of eight action plans were approved by the NRSC with the last and eighth one approved in November 2017 and 2020.
The goal of the eighth action plan was to achieve the SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) target and reduce the number of road accidents fatalities and injuries by 50 percent with the year 2020.
But the target could not be achieved, officials and experts said.
Around one month before the last action plan expired, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while speaking on the occasion of the National Road Safety Day in October last year, gave directions to prepare a new plan.
The Road Transport and Highway Division on October 27 last year directed the BRTA to prepare a draft and take opinions and updates from 26 ministries and agencies concerned. The BRTA recently sent the final draft to the division in this regard.
Citing police reports, the draft mentioned that in the last five years, road accidents claimed the lives of an average of 2,825 people every year.
"It is feared that with the continued expansion of the road network and the growth of traffic, this trend is likely to continue in the future unless effective remedial measures are taken with the coordination of all concerned agencies through national action plans," read the draft.
It also mentioned that "a suitable vision for road safety in Bangladesh, which is not unrealistic, is to achieve 50 percent reduction in road accident fatalities and injuries within the next 10 years [2030] and also the reduction of the number of road accidents to nearly 30 percent".
"For the next four years, a goal could be set up towards achieving 20-25 percent reduction in the annual number of road accident fatalities and injuries by the end of the year 2024," it added.
ACCIDENTS, DEATHS CONTINUE
As the government's steps for curbing road crashes continue to remain confined to holding meetings and forming committees and sub-committees, road crashes are continuing to take lives, experts said.
The committees make similar recommendations time and again, but those are hardly implemented, helping indiscipline -- the major reason behind road crashes -- to rule country's road transport sector, they said.
According to police reports, around 3,918 people were killed in 4,198 road crashes last year, even when operation of public transport remained suspended for more than two months to contain Covid-19 situation.
Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, who prepared the report after compiling media reports, however, said the number of accident and deaths were 4,891 and 6,686 respectively last year.
A total of 4,138 people died in 4,147 road accidents in 2019, said a police report.
In 2019, at least 7,855 people were killed in 5,516 road crashes across the country, according to Jatri Kalyan Samity.
However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated the number of casualties to be much higher than reported by police and other organisations.
In its latest report published in December 2018, the WHO said at least 24,954 people were killed in road crashes in the country in 2016, which is almost 10 times the official number given by police.
Total 2,463 people were killed in 2,566 road accidents that year, police said.
Citing their research, Prof Md Hadiuzzaman, director of Accident Research Institute at Buet, said the number of road crashes increased by 90 percent and causalities by 60 percent in last five years.
He added that the road infrastructure did not increase much compare to the huge rise of vehicle numbers in last 10 years.
"As it is very difficult to increase roads, the authority should take a strong policy decision to control vehicle numbers, especially private cars and small vehicles," he told The Daily Star yesterday.
"But, unfortunately several decisions taken recently, including slashing motorcycle registration fees, go against the notion of controlling the number of vehicles," he said, adding, "So, without changing the policy decisions, it would not be possible to achieve the target to be set in the new action plan, because the number of accidents will rise with the rise of vehicle numbers," he added.
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