Safer Roads: Still a Far Cry - "causes of this neglected epidemic"

Safer Roads: Still a Far Cry

Faizul Khan Tanim investigates the increasing rate of road accidents in the country and the NEGLECTED preventive measures

A pall of gloom descended on Mirsharai Upazilla when in a tragic road accident, 44 school children were killed. It happened when a truck carrying 60 of them returning from a football tourney, skidded off the road and plunged into a roadside canal, the place of occurrence not being too far from the port city of Chittagong.

Road accidents in Bangladesh claim on an average 12,000 lives annually and lead to about 35,000 injuries according to Dhaka-based accident research institutes while according to a 2009 world health organization (WHO) estimate, the count is nearly 20,050. The difference is even more as government institutes like Bangladesh road transport authority (BRTA) and police reported a little less than 3,000 fatal casualties in the country in 2008. The Road Traffic Accident database is being maintained and updated by BRTA on the basis of police micro-computer accident analysis package (MAAP) information. BRTA and the Bangladesh Police have been working together to maintain the credibility of the database and promoting its statistical accuracy, says the official website.

Road accidents statistics in Bangladesh revealed children less than 16 years old being killed in road accidents amounts to about an alarming 21 per cent of all the victims.

The primary contributing factors leading to road accidents are identified as adverse roadways, poorly designed junctions and road sections, reckless driving, drunk driving, vehicles driven by helpers without proper driving licence, excessive speeding, dangerous overtaking, failure to obey mandatory traffic regulations by pedestrians, mechanised and non-mechanised vehicles plying on the same streets – for example a slow-moving rickshaw as opposed to a very fast moving truck and defective vehicles of course.

Others include very low level of awareness and traffic sense among the citizens, mainly because of inadequate education, severe loopholes in traffic law enforcement rules, etc.

The secretary of Bangladesh Truck Chalak Union Aminbazar, Ismail Hossain Refu said, “Whenever there is an accident, it is quite common to put the blame on the drivers. People say that the drivers were either careless or were driving under influence of inebriation but I would request all to pause for a moment and think of the atrocious conditions of the roads in this country. I would like to remind everyone that instead of eight hours’ work duty, a bus or truck driver in this country on an average drives 16 hours a day minimum, pressurised by the bus and truck owners, hell-bent on making insane profits. It is hardly possible to carry out such strenuous manual labour without any rest.”

At the same time Refu also mentioned that the training of drivers ought to be under rigorous inspection. Drivers are known to get their licenses too easily through bribery. Thus, even drivers with legitimate licenses in many cases are losing their goodwill. The owners are not serious about their unfit vehicles and they always force the drivers to use very low quality locally manufactured spare parts. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles long past their operating life are seen on the roads and the road transport authorities and police are doing little about the phenomenon.

“I would request the bodies conducting research on accidents to inquire about the number of drunk drivers. 90 per cent of them are clean and if they drink at all they usually drink after reaching the destinations”, he added.

When asked as to why these unions and associations do not take action when they identify a culprit driver, Refu said:

“Associations and unions have developed like mushrooms all over the country in the last decade and most of them are not even original and have proper liaison with the government agencies and most importantly, they are all politicised. The unions should be run by members of the bus/truck drivers fraternity and not shady businessmen with political backings, otherwise what’s the use?”

Meanwhile, other drivers from the city’s Gabtoli Bus Stand alleged that according to their owners’ recommendation, they do not approach the authorities for renewing the fitness certificates but manage as and when necessary by bribing the traffic policemen on the roads. It is also a common practice and scam to get fitness certificates through bribery at the offices of BRTA.

Another driver Rasul Nizam from Shyamoli bus stand said, “Stricter laws should be put into practice replacing the age old Tk 200 fine system with amounts which will be alarming news for the careless ones. The laws need to be properly enforced and should not be in papers only. One of the 44 children in the recent accident could very well be mine.”

These drivers say that upon reaching a destination, there is no arrangement of resting, let alone sleeping, for the drivers and they use the bus seats. And whenever the driver falls sick, his helper is asked to take over.

When Bangladesh Bus Truck Owners’ Association was contacted, a highly placed source seeking anonymity admitted about the mounting pressure on the drivers. He said that due to the government restriction of not allowing trucks inside the city during the day hours and insane traffic jams even during the nights, they are forced to instruct the drivers to drive fast and at least make two individual trips to individual destinations to gain the extra income.

He added that the roads should be properly fixed, talking over mobile phones during driving should be banned, drunk drivers should be taken to custody and fined for commiting crimes.

A senior teacher in a public school Mobashhar Alam said, “It is high time that we have trauma centres throughout the city and spread across all 64 districts so that during an emergency, accident victims receive immediate attention. A national day of mourning should have been declared as this was such a huge tragedy in the country where more than 40 children died. Had it been students from a renowned school in Dhaka, we would have seen stricter regulations and activities by now. ”

“What is more painful, the political parties always sends a one-line condolence message but instead, if they can have programmes to cope with and overcome national tragedies, the whole country would have more respect towards them. And whenever a tragic accident happens, the driver always flees the scene and the law enforcement agency members are never able to catch the perpetrators”, Alam added.

As the sufferers and victims of road tragedies are increasing, some citizens actually decided not to depend on the government only but start awareness programs of their own. And one such organisation is Nirapad Sharak Chai (NSC) or We Demand Safe Road, a social movement, started by the renowned actor of the country Ilias Kanchan.

NSC came into being on December 1993 after the sad demise of Jahanara Kanchan, wife of Ilias Kanchan on October 22, 1993. The Message of the organization ‘We must ensure road safety at all costs’ has gone beyond the frontiers of Bangladesh and its necessity has also been felt even in various international forums. The people from all walks of life have come around to support the organisers of the movement led by Ilias Kanchan spontaneously to carry the message forward throughout the length and breadth of the country.

The vice chairman of NSC, Ehsanul Huq Kamal, he said, “After this latest tragedy, we sent a proposal to the communications and education ministry so that there are separate chapters on road safety and traffic awareness in the textbooks from class five to nine. It is our duty to help develop the materials and we will.”

“Not only do we arrange an annual national conference on road safety, we also have opened a school of driving and training of drivers where we provide free education; we also rehabilitate distressed victims of accidents. Our organisational activities include – information, education and motivation dissemination of knowledge on road safety; arrange training, workshops and seminars; observe national road safety day; sharing sessions and advocacy with the drivers, lobbying with transport leaders and owners to reduce road accidents and even work with government agencies to formulate road safety mechanisms”, Kamal added.

Road Safety expert Dr Mazharul Haque, Professor of Civil Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) says that better roads are not necessarily safer. “These are new roads and are generally in good condition,” he said. “Traditional road design aimed at reducing the number of crashes by widening and straightening roads. But that has no impact on the rate of death and disability because people simply start to drive faster. We must adopt the internationally accepted systemic approach to road safety.”

When BRTA was contacted, a high official requesting anonymity said, “Actually law should be properly enforced immediately to stop drivers talking over their cell phones while driving. If there is an emergency, the helper or assistant can take the call and notify the driver later. Due to fund constraints we cannot implement awareness programmes to reduce road accidents and moreover, National Road Safety Council formed in July 1995 could not implement even 25 to

30 per cent of its first strategic transport plan let alone the rest.”

While this official mentioned inadequate manpower for proper implementation of projects, he refused to comment on issues such as the growing numbers of unfit vehicles, bribery practices in BRTA, drivers getting licenses without fulfilling BRTA criteria and no actions taken by the organisation despite repeated media reports on road accidents.

It must be added that according to BRTA, an applicant not being a foreign national must be able to read and write either Bengali or English. And a minimum age of 18 years for non-professional and 20 years for professional driving license [Section 04 of MV Ordinance 1983] is mandatory. While these rules are on paper, citizens question if any of these are followed.

A senior police officer speaking to The Independent said that only enforcement of law cannot control violation of traffic rules. Necessary rules exist in the country but until the drivers and commuters both are aware about the rules and regulations, fatal accidents cannot be averted, the official added.

Assistant Inspector General of Police Fazlur Rahman said, “About violations of rules, the official said that the law is being enforced under the Motor Vehicles Ordinance of 1983 but the ordinance has not yet been made into an act. Although the law enforcers continued filing cases against violation of traffic rules, but so far as he could recall, not a single offender has been punished till date”.

He added, “Offenders have been fined but none has undergone any punishment”.

Under the existing ordinance, the law enforcers can impose fines on traffic rule violators ranging from Tk 100 to Tk 500 and the fine is doubled when the violator is produced before the mobile court or in special drives, the official said.

Since the fines are in small amounts in the existing ordinance, the drivers violate the traffic rules repeatedly, another senior police official said.

United Nations has declared that 2011-2020 will be the Decade of Action for Road Safety, road

traffic injury is sure to move up the global political agenda. It should finally be time to reclaim our roads. However for that certain steps need to be taken.

Unless fitness of vehicles and proper training and skill for the men behind the wheel is ensured, there is no possibility of streamlining the transport sector and curbing accidents. The priority should be to launch an effective campaign against corruption in the sector. If corruption can be eliminated, it will be easier to address other problems concerning infrastructure and road use and thus reduce road accidents.

*This article was first published in The Independent's Weekend Magazine July 22 Friday 2011

http://www.theindependentbd.com/weekly-independent/61725-safer-roads-still-a-far-cry.html