Roads and highways in the country have regularly been a cause for worry. Now that research by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology pin-points the factors behind frequent highway accidents, we believe it is time for action. These are the bare facts the report by BUET's Accident Research Unit (ARI) has come up with: ten major highways in Bangladesh are at high risk where accidents are concerned because 219 black spots have been identified on them. It is not that we are waiting for disaster to strike. The reality is that there have already been as many as 2,515 accidents on these 219 spots, the number of casualties being 2,349. That, again, is not the entire picture as the ARI would have us know, for the institute gets only those reports of accidents that the police provide it with. The conclusion is therefore simple: a whole range of other accidents occurring on major roads and highways across the country may very well be going unreported.
That brings us to the crux of the issue. It has been obvious for a very long period that few if any road safety rules are taken into cognisance at the time roads are built. The sketch provided in this newspaper yesterday certainly typifies the problem. Where there should be measures to ensure safety of travel, through a presence of clear road signs and indications of how and when to take a turn on the road, there are only arrow markings which do not let the driver know what he might come up against as he makes a left or right turn. Add to that other difficulties that can block a driver's vision as he tries manoeuvring his vehicle into a new direction. The presence of huge billboards on the highways -- and inexplicably they are mostly placed at bends along the roads -- is a clear invitation to danger, something for which no driver can properly be held responsible.
Now, there are quite a few questions the Roads and Highways Department must answer. The first one is the simplest: with such a huge bureaucratic structure in place, how well has it performed where road and highway safety is concerned? Then comes a more serious one: how is it that the RHD has no list of the black spots the ARI report has just informed the country about? As the organisation responsible for the construction and maintenance of roads and highways, it is the moral responsibility of the RHD to ensure fault-free and accident-free vehicular movement. That it has failed to do the job, that it took a university research team to do what the RHD on its own should have done says a whole lot about the way things have been happening. One of those is, clearly, the faulty engineering and design in the construction of the highways. And, of course, there is too the matter of the corruption that keeps creeping into such ostensibly public interest-related activities.
For the authorities, it is time to sit up and go for remedial action. These 219 black spots have been observed on intersections, roundabouts, junctions and turnings. And then there is the inadequacy of road dividers and speed breakers on the highways. The RHD has spoken of a road safety audit manual being ready in the next six months. Why was such a manual not prepared earlier? It is these questions that the authorities must grapple with and answer, to citizens' satisfaction. Will the minister for communications take notice?