Editorial
Another highway tragedy
What will it take before we take notice?
ONCE again there has been another horrific accident on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway, the country's main inter-city thoroughfare. This time it was two buses colliding head on, leaving, at last count, 22 dead, with many more fatally injured so that the grim toll is certain to rise higher.
We are shocked to learn that in the past year and a half there have been over 200 fatalities on this stretch of the highway alone, the 97 kms that run through Comilla district, and that safety experts and professionals have been arguing for years is particularly unsafe. No less shocking is the fact that the official figure for highway deaths per year in Bangladesh is above 4,000 and the actual figure is estimated by experts to be perhaps three times that.
Nevertheless, despite this horrendous loss of life to say nothing of the thousands who are injured, despite the fact that the mere act of riding the nation's highways is a high risk endeavour that no one is immune to, despite the cost to the nation in economic terms from having such perilous roads, the issue of highway safety has never caught the attention of any government.
The real shame here is that ameliorative or corrective measures would be relatively easy to enact. Certainly, in the long run we need to look into safer and broader roads with dividers and fencing and that this requires funding. But it is worth pointing out that there is also much that the government can do in the short-term to address the problem.
The first order of the day is to enact stringent laws for speeding and unsafe driving and then put in place personnel to enforce it. This is the tried and true method of road enforcement the world over, and would have the added benefit of raising revenue for other road safety measures as well.
The problem in Bangladesh is with ensuring that this kind of system works and is not used as a rent seeking mechanism by law enforcement. But it seems to us, that with the much vaunted drive against corruption, it wouldn't be out of place to look at reforms that would allow the police force, in this case, highway patrol, to be more functional and to contribute to the much-needed protection of life and limb.
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