Bus races, where lives are lost

Racing games were a fascinating part of our childhood. Those electrifying moments were a source of great delight and amusement. I was accustomed to car and bike races. But Dhaka, a city of chronic chaos and woes, has something very different to offer. The worst type of race, the public bus race, is filled with horror instead of excitement. If you’re someone who regularly commutes through the bustling streets of the city, you already know it’s a common practice, which it shouldn’t be in the first place. Dilapidated buses, with signs of battle scars, are often seen grappling with each other to get passengers. They pay little heed to traffic rules and regulations as their only concentration whirls around profit maximization.

On 9 October, like any other day, two buses from Akash Paribahan were battling to go ahead of one another and their recklessness snatched away a life full of promises and aspirations. Irene, a recent graduate from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) was heading to her office with her sister. At around 9:15am when they were trying to cross Pragati Sarani, one of the busiest junctions of the capital, the two racing buses slammed into one another and ran over both the sisters. Irene's dreams ended right at that spot and her sister received severe injuries, just about escaping death. The two sisters used to work at the same office and always remained together through thick and thin, but the brutal buses tore them apart...forever! The driver was arrested after a few hours of the incident, yet the question hovers whether arresting or legislative measures can bring any change.

Let’s not forget the Road Safety Movement of 2018 which sparked from the deaths of two high school students in Dhaka. The bus driver without any licence was driving crazily to collect more passengers and ran over those two students. Hundreds and thousands of students from schools and universities took to the streets right after the incident demanding safety on the streets. The general people also had massive support for the students. As the protests were gathering momentum across the country, the fascist Awami League government primarily tried to deal with it with an iron fist, assaulting students and harassing journalists with the help of the police and the party’s student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). As it didn’t work and made people more furious, they approved the public demands and formulated a draft of the Road Transport Act 2018-which promised to take hard measures against the violation of law on the roads.

The death march on the streets hasn’t been stemmed yet, even though six springs have passed since then. Approximately 25,000 lives are lost in road accidents every year in Bangladesh, according to recent data published by the Bangladesh Jatri Kallyan Samiti. Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) revealed that more than 5,000 people died in road accidents in the year 2023 alone.

The sorry saga of the streets of Dhaka is more evident as a big portion of 67 per cent of the dwellers use public transport to commute. Shoddy seats with little leg space, unfit chassises, old vehicles with broken headlights and mirrors, and hardly any space to breathe due to overcrowding, portray the perennial suffering and agony of the commuters. Traffic congestion makes it much worse as one has to wait for hours in these unbearable conditions to reach the destinations. According to data published by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), the economy loses Tk 400 billion per year due to the insane traffic gridlock.

Bus drivers are not solely responsible for the unprecedented situation. Myriads of vehicles running at different speeds, the carelessness of the commuters, unethical police, and beneficiaries of political parties are also responsible. The chief adviser of the current interim government, Dr. Yunus, has urged the police and experts from BUET to find a quick and effective solution to assuage the traffic woes in the capital. "We have to ease traffic congestion. We need to find a solution immediately," he said during a meeting at the state guest house Jamuna in Dhaka.

The BUET team proposed six points to mitigate traffic congestion. Of these six points they also figured out how to stop the battles of the buses by bringing them under one government company or going to Public Private Partnership (PPP) with the bus companies. Though this shows a ray of hope, skepticism remains. As I write this piece sitting in Dhaka, I am sure that somewhere or the other in Dhaka, buses are still racing and hopes and dreams are on a constant verge of collapse. May our hopes survive. May we survive too.

* Tahasin B Chowdhury is a student of University of Dhaka