Not even a week has passed since Nayeem Hasan—a second-year student of Notre Dame College—was killed in a road accident in the city, that we came to know about another student's death in a road crash in the capital's Rampura area. Mainuddin Islam Durjoy, a student of Rampura Ekramunnessa High School, was run over by a bus of Anabil Paribahan in Rampura on November 29. The 19-year-old just finished his SSC exams and was hoping to get enrolled in a good college when reckless driving took away his life. The accident happened at a time when students have been demonstrating for safer roads in the city, demanding the enforcement of the Road Transport Act, 2018, as well as justice and compensation for Nayeem and other road crash victims.

Besides these two accidents that got people's attention, several other accidents also took place in the last one week. Among them, the killing of Ahasan Kabir Khan, an employee of the Daily Sangbad, by a garbage compactor vehicle of the Dhaka North City Corporation, and the death of three students in Chandpur as a BRTC bus hit their CNG-run auto-rickshaw, were reported in The Daily Star. What we have seen in Nayeem, Mainuddin and Ahasan's cases is that the drivers first hit them, and as they fell on the street, they ran over them. The lives of all three victims could have been saved if the drivers had stopped their vehicles on time instead of running them over. The sheer indifference shown by the drivers towards human lives is truly abhorrent.

As the number of road accidents rises in the country, we want to ask the authorities: What is the point of formulating a law if it remains largely unenforced? Do the authorities really care about people's lives or are they just trying to serve the interests of the transport owners and workers? Why did the government make amendments—which is in the draft form—to the Act even before enforcing it?

It is unfortunate that the transport owners and workers protested against some very important sections of the Act and the government actually bowed down to those demands. According to the Road Transport Act, 2018, there was a provision of maximum punishment of five years' imprisonment for causing death and serious injuries to a person through reckless driving. However, in the amended Act, the punishment of maximum five years' imprisonment for serious injuries has been excluded. According to transport experts, the changes were brought to the Act without holding discussions with the concerned stakeholders, which is shocking.

The increasing number of deaths on our roads and the growing anarchy in our public transport sector need to be addressed at all costs and for that, there is no alternative to enforcing the transport act. If the guilty drivers in the above-mentioned—and other—cases can be made to face justice, we may hope to see some changes on our roads.