It's a kind of murder

“It's one kind of murder,” said Prof Serajul Islam Choudhury, referring to lives lost due to reckless driving.

One after another, incidents like this continue to occur, but the government has not done anything yet to address the problems in the transport sector, added the renowned academic, author, critic and columnist.

Students took to the streets in a spontaneous reaction to the loss of two young lives on Airport Road on Sunday as a result of a mad race between two buses, said Prof Serajul.

“It is an outburst of pent-up anger,” he said while talking about the students' demonstration.

Prof Serajul said students got killed by buses and trucks, raped and harassed in public transports but no action was taken by the authorities concerned.

Many factors are responsible “for what we're seeing now”, Prof Serajul said. Unskilled and overworked drivers, sorry state of roads, considering the problems with political views and inadequate steps by the government to solve the issues are some of the bigger ones, he added.

“I see a similarity between the quota reform movement and students' protest for road safety,” said the professor emeritus of Dhaka University.

“The government did not understand the former one and is not taking the latter one seriously either,” he added.