
ROAD safety has continuously been put at bay as the number of fatal accidents has only increased for seven years since the road safety movement in 2018 after a bus killed two college students in Dhaka on July 29 that year. The government made the Road Transport Act 2018 in September that year. Police data show that 2,635 died in road accidents in 2019, 3,918 in 2020, 5,088 in 2021 and 4,636 in 2022. Statistics available with the Road Transport Authority, which started compiling accident figures after it objected to private statistics, show that 5,024 people died in 2023, 5,480 in 2024 and 2,943 this January-June. Private estimates, however, say that 5,211 died in road accidents in 2019, 5,431 in 2020, 6,284 in 2021, 7,723 in 2022, 6,524 in 2023, 7,294 in 2024 and 3,662 this January-June. The World Health Organisation estimates that 21,316 people died in road accidents in 2015, 24,944 in 2018 and 31,578 in 2021.
Whilst all the statistics show that the number of people dead in road accidents was increasing, with the Awami League government having miserably failed in reducing the number of fatal road accidents, the interim government on July 20 said that it had begun a countrywide drive against more than 80,000 buses and trucks that have served out their economic life. The Road Transport Authority is reported to have registered until this May 85,198 buses and minibuses and 2,14,445 trucks, covered vans and tankers since the entity began its operations in 1988. But the agency still has no data on the vehicles phased out. Of the vehicles, 39,169 buses and minibuses are reported to be older than 20 years and 41,140 trucks, covered vans and tankers older than 25 years. Such vehicles are viewed as a major reason for road accidents. But in response to the government’s drive against buses and trucks that served out their economic life, the Road Transport Owners and Workers’ Coordination Council on July 27 announced a 72-hour countrywide strike of all commercial vehicles beginning on August 12 to push for the demand for an extension to the economic life of buses and trucks. The government and transport owners and workers should understand that increasing the economic life of buses and trucks by changing the definition may save the law but it would hardly help to save life.
An initially lax enforcement of the Road Transport Act 2018 is said to have contributed to a worsening situation in the road transport regime. There is, therefore, no scope for the government to show any legal leniency in this connection.