17 fall victim to yet another instance of reckless driving

We are yet again bombarded with the horrific news of 17 people dying when a bus and microbus collided, head-on, on the Dhaka-Rajshahi highway on Friday afternoon. 11 people were burnt to death as the microbus involved went up in flames and kept burning for 10 minutes, until firefighters arrived on the scene. Of the eight who had been rescued from outside the charred vehicle, six (including two children and one woman) succumbed to their injuries at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.

Although a case has been filed against the unidentified driver of the Hanif Enterprise bus (on grounds of reckless driving, endangering human life, hurting public safety, and for "culpable homicide"), we cannot help but wonder whether justice will be served given the track record of punishment meted out to such reckless drivers.

Sadly, this is far from being an isolated event. Earlier this month, on March 20, four people were killed when two buses collided head-on on the Dhaka-Rangpur highway in Sherpur upazila. The very next day, 11 people were killed in two separate incidents of head-on vehicle collisions, one in Majkandi area under Madhukhali upazila and another in Atadi of Bhanga upazila.

When the Road Transport Act 2018 was first passed, and then came into effect over a year later, it faced protests from transport workers. Unfortunately the law has still not been implemented when and where necessary, even though road accidents due to reckless driving keep piling up in numbers each month.

Most of these accidents occur on highways (specifically, 35.83 percent of all accidents in January of this year, according to the Road Safety Foundation), where driving carelessly seems to be the norm.   The frequency of these accidents is such that we must urge the government to clamp down on reckless driving by strictly (and without favour) enforcing the relevant laws it has itself put in place. Not just drivers, but owners of vehicles causing such incidents need to also be held accountable under these laws. All victims and their families must be given proper compensation. This may also help to make transport owners more concerned about how fit their vehicles are and how responsibly their employees drive them.