Riding on bumps
There are 61 speed breakers between Gabtoli Bridge in Dhaka and Paturia Ferry Terminal, 90km in the north. A gateway to south-western and northern districts, the road is a single lane extremely busy highway. The journey time on any normal day could take as long as four hours.
Thousands of buses, trucks, cars, minivans and scooters ply this road every day negotiating anything from a horse driven cart to rickshaw vans, nosimans and push carts carrying bamboos on the narrow road. In most cases road signs are non-existent. The roadside bazaars and thousands of people haphazardly crossing the highway any time anywhere make the journey even more hazardous. Then finally comes the recklessness of our drivers, particularly bus and truck drivers, who show no respect whatsoever to any other road users, frequently causing fatal accidents. Policing the highway has nothing to do with controlling reckless driving, over-speeding or use of faulty vehicles.
Here is a firsthand account of a recent trip to Paturia:
The nuisance on the road appears first at Gabtoli. Three buses stand on the Dhaka-Paturia access road and embark on a fierce race for picking up passengers. Oblivious to the tailback they are causing, young men as lanky as long distance runners in tattered jeans and I-love-Shahrukh-Khan T-shirt, grab passengers and try to drag them into the bus. Impatient motorists behind the buses keep honking in vein. Within minutes the usual morning traffic builds up at Gabtoli. A traffic constable sitting at a tea stall by the roadside moves in. He blows his powerful whistle to scare the buses away. Defiant of the whistle, the young bus assistants ridicule the constable by laughing and patting on his shoulder.
The buses take all their time and move slowly towards Amin Bazar Bridge. Buses, trucks and other vehicles slow down on the bridge to negotiate a huge hump installed halfway through the bridge. Across the bridge dozens of trucks are parked on the highway leading to Paturia ferry terminal, on the bank of the Padma. The trucks occupy half the road where other road users are forced to slow down to form a single file for the passage.
The stretch of the highway between Amin Bazar and Savar is a dual carriageway. Scores of loaded trucks keep the fast lane under their control while they are moving. Anyone wanting to overtake the giants is expected to do so on the inside lane, which is a clear violation of traffic rules and poses great danger. On the left hand side of the highway, rickshaws, rickshaw vans, nosimans, pushcarts and a new comer--electric three wheelers--reign supreme.
A bus from behind, blaring hydraulic horn speeds past all vehicles, dangerously swerving from side to side , disappears ahead. Suddenly an empty truck appears on the road heading into the traffic flow on the wrong side. It has just unloaded earth into a roadside ditch and took the wrong side of the road for returning to the right side conveniently avoiding a long detour. Nobody seems to mind. The roaring traffic comes to a standstill to make room for the unruly truck.
Suddenly visibility gets blurred with hundreds of brick kilns spewing thick smoke from chimneys on both sides of the road. Cars move from right to left and then right again to find a way for overtaking a truck moving very slowly. The black smoke emitted by the goods-laden vehicle clouds the area with a smell.
In Savar Bazar half a dozen truncheon wielding policemen, led by a sub-inspector, try hard to persuade dozens of buses not to block the highway. Half of the road is occupied there by vendors, rickshaws and other local transport. The traffic comes to a single file.
Several cars and minivans move behind a tractor transporting huge logs waiting for their turn to overtake. Heavy on-coming traffic forces the vehicles to wait. Suddenly two speedy buses arrive on the scene from behind with their hydraulic horns honking ceaselessly. One of the buses ignores the on-coming traffic and starts overtaking the convoy at speed. The driver first drives the bus head on with another on-coming bus. As the on-coming vehicle tries to find a space to avoid a head-on collision, the overtaking bus swerves left and misses the tractor by a whisker. It somehow finds a way to go past. The other bus and the smaller vehicles soon follow suit.
Most buses, particularly couches, do not slow down at speed breakers at all. Cars have to go over the bumps in an angle so that they do not scrape their bottoms. Some speed breakers are too high for vehicles with low ground clearance.
All the way to Paturia the drama keeps unfolding on the road. In the bazaars where hundreds of people sit on the highway selling agricultural produces, none slows down to a safe speed. Instead, blaring horns, vehicles run past.
NIGHT RIDING
Most vehicles plying the highways at night either do not have any provision for dipping the headlights or they are unaware of the effects of a high beam on other drivers. As the rows of speedy vehicles of all sizes stream by, a barrage of high beams is sure to blind the drivers of on-coming vehicles. Trucks install, in addition to the existing lights, several extra lights, while buses hardly dim their powerful beams.
Many vehicles are found plying with only one light functioning. Rear lights of many are simply not there while rickshaws, vans and nosimans suddenly appear on the road without any lights whatsoever. They do not have high-visibility paint on them either.
Night drive appears highly risky particularly for smaller vehicles.
One thing is sure. There is no policing on our highways until an accident occurs. There is none to ask why the lights are faulty and why someone is taking so much risk unnecessarily. Most policemen along the highways have no training whatsoever on vehicular movements and they are totally ignorant about traffic rules. As this correspondent asked 10 policemen working along the highway if they know how to drive, all answered, “We are too poor to afford a vehicle.”
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