Accidents during Eid holidays
ROAD accidents have taken a heavy toll of human lives during the Eid holidays, with at least 20 people being killed across the country on last Friday and Saturday alone, including a high number of the injured. People returning to the city after Eid remain as exposed to accidents as they were during there outbound journeys. The stupendous increase in the levels of public mobility tend to only exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities to road mishaps across the country. Nothing has concrete been done to minimise road hazards in a planned and synchronised way.
Sadly enough, traffic rules take leave of us during the Eid holidays and all sorts of blatant violations of safety regulations become the order of the day. The buses are driven by helpers promoted to meet shortage of experienced drivers; overloading is common and so is the mad race for reaching the destinations at breakneck speed.
The passengers whose lives are at stake do not have any say in such matters. All they can do is buy tickets in the black market, usually paying five times the normal fare and pray for nothing untoward to happen. They reach their destinations if they are lucky enough, otherwise they get killed or maimed. What overloading can lead to was witnessed in Natore when two young men were killed after falling from the rooftop of a bus when it had to swerve to avoid a head-on collision with another vehicle. Yet, nobody is held responsible for pushing innocent people towards such grave dangers.
Bus and transport owners and operators have always turned a deaf ear to the appeal for reining in the unruly drivers trying to outpace each other. The owners also fail to attach due value to human lives as they allow overloading-- another reason behind accidents. Finally, employing helpers as drivers is a criminal offence that they never hesitate to commit.
Now, the question is what the law enforcers are doing to protect human lives. Their performance is dismal as they fail to enforce the traffic rules, so crucially important for avoiding accidents. The law enforcers have to perform a lot better in a country where more than 4,000 people are killed in road accidents every year.
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