Coordinated efforts needed for curbing road accidents

Government agencies must step up their coordinated efforts to reduce rising road accident numbers which kill thousands of people and cost the economy Tk 5,000 crore every year, experts and officials said yesterday.
They said non-government organisations (NGO) should also come forward to help achieve the country's target to cut road accident fatalities by half by 2020 as per United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.
They were speaking at a workshop, “Safe Roads and Traffic Safety: Planning, Design and Operational Considerations”, in the National Economic Council's conference room in the capital's Planning Commission.
Official estimates say road accidents claim 3,500 to 4,000 lives a year while injuring another 5,000 people.
But as per Accident Research Institute (ARI), under the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, the fatalities were between 12,000 and 20,000 per year.
Addressing as chief guest, Planning Minister AK Khandker said the media, NGOs and citizen's groups can play an important role in raising road accident awareness and help implement robust traffic management and road safety programmes.
ARI Director Hasib Mohammed Ahsan said road accidents were increasing in developing countries like Bangladesh and going down in developed countries.
He said global road crash prevention investment was very insignificant compared to investment on other sectors and it was no different in Bangladesh, where road crashes claim two percent of the gross domestic product.
Muhammad Fazlul Bari, a member of Planning Commission's physical infrastructure division, said road accidents, claiming Tk 5,000 in economic losses annually, were rampant as 75 percent of passengers and 70 percent of freights depend on road transport.
The government plans to reduce road accident fatalities by 25 percent within 2015, he said.
Ekram Ahmed, a Public Service Commission member, said data on accidents and fatalities were not reliable as such incidents were reported only if the victims sought police help.
Bhuiyan Shafiqul Islam, secretary-in-charge of Planning Division; Mozammel Haque Khan, secretary of the implementation, monitoring and evaluation division of planning ministry; Abdul Mannan Howlader, a Planning Commission member; and Hasanur Rahman, division chief of Physical Infrastructure Division; also spoke on the occasion.