Highway journey extremely hazardous

THE frequency at which highway accidents are taking place in the country has reached an ominous proportion. But the glaring fact remains that there is no authority around to monitor and regulate the speed, fitness as well as overloading of buses and trucks to bring the rate of such accidents down. As a result, bus and private car passengers are paying with their lives for such apathy, for such lack of concern, on the part of the administration, which is extremely lamentable, to say the least. As recent as last Friday, a speeding passenger bus crashed into a roadside tree when it lost control while giving way to a truck coming from the opposite direction on the Dhaka-Khulna highway. The accident left 17 dead and many more injured. It is only likely that if the drivers of both the vehicles had any respect for human lives and fear for the law of the land, they would have been more careful while driving heavy vehicles on highways.
On the highways passenger bus, microbus and truck drivers care little to comply with the laws prohibiting over-speeding and they engage in a mad race for overtaking one another to reach the destination. More often than not such over-speeding results in tragedies like the one that happened on Friday. It is worth mentioning that in 2009, hundreds of similar accidents have taken scores of lives, and despite repeated appeal by the people, no step towards monitoring of the vehicles has been taken by the government.
There have been recommendations for provision of severe punishment for unqualified drivers and law-violating owners but we cannot recall any such action having been taken by the relevant authorities against them. One media report ( Prothom Alo, 27 December 2009) says that there are 12 lac (1.2 million) vehicles in the country of which drivers of 8 lac vehicles have driving licence issued by BRTA. That means over 4 lac drivers do not have legal documents. According to BRTA, of the 8 lac drivers with licence, 5 lac had received them without appearing at any examination or test. They were given licence on the basis of a list given by the labour unions. There are allegations that drivers pay large amount of money to have their names on the labour union list.
These facts paint a clear picture of what is happening in the road transport sector, right from obtaining licence to getting away from the clutches of law. Therefore, unless the high-ups in the government step forward with clear intentions to reduce accidents, through installing a mechanism of monitoring and detection, our highways will remain virtual death traps for anybody. This, by all means, should be taken up as a priority.