Bangabandhu Expressway: Halt the trail of death
Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Expressway is solid evidence of the country’s development in road communication. This 55 km road stretches from Dhaka’s Jatrabari to Faridpur’s Bhanga and is the first ever expressway of the country.
The highway, linked to the Padma Bridgem has brought about major changes in communication for the people of southern region. What’s depressing is that the trail of death on this expressway does not seem to stop. News of dreadful road accidents on the expressway is recurrently making headlines in media.
On 24 June, an ambulance caught fire from a tyre bursting, killing eight people including the driver. Earlier on 19 March, when a bus lost control and fell off of the expressway breaking through the railing, 19 people were killed.
Within one year of the expressway being opened, there have been 260 accidents and 94 deaths on the highway. Such a huge number of deaths on a single highway that too within just a year is highly concerning.
Prothom Alo reports that careless driving, passengers’ unawareness and lax monitoring from the authority are responsible for this march of deaths on the expressway. People aren’t following the law properly on the highway.
Noticeably, although some fines are being levied for defying the law careless movement of the vehicles isn’t stopping. That means the level of surveillance and the fines that are being imposed aren’t enough. Even motorbikes are entering and moving on the wrong side of the expressway.
Battery-powered auto-rickshaws are banned from moving on the expressway. These too are moving on the wrong side. Not only that, even rickshaw vans are moving on this highway. Is it possible to keep the expressway safe at all after so much chaos?
There are 21 foot-over bridges to go from one side of Bangabandu Expressway to another. But people cross the road directly instead of using those bridges.
In fact, the barbed-wire fence on either sides of the highway has also been cut into at some spots. This has happened because of the buses picking up or dropping off passengers haphazardly from anywhere. Bus owners are blaming this entirely on the passengers.
They say they feel compelled to stop anywhere, from where the passengers want to get on or off the bus. There’s no scope to accept such logic. If the buses as well as other vehicles maintain the law and remain persistent about stopping the bus at the precise stoppage, passengers will be compelled to follow that.
There is no scope of vehicles colliding face to face on the expressway either, since there are road dividers in place. Yet, why are there so many accidents and deaths on the expressway? Concerned officials of the roads department believe that excessive speeding, racing to overtake and mechanical glitches on the vehicles are causing road accidents there.
This is not supposed be happening, if the police and the road transport authority, those responsible for monitoring of the highways and ensuring the road transport act, performed their duties properly. It is their duty to compel those who don’t want to follow by the law, into following it. So, it is them who have to take responsibilities for these accidents.
Roads and Highways Department (RHD) authority in Munshiganj say that the work of installing optical fiber and larger CCTV cameras on the road is about to begin. These will observe and record speed of the vehicles along with their registration numbers. This will make it very easy to identify those breaking the law and help bring them to justice. Let the road safety project commence and be implemented faster.
There is no scopes of being lax in taking steps against careless bus drivers. All the allegations there are against police including that of extortion on road have to be taken care of. At the same time, let there be more extensive activities to increase awareness among the passengers.
Failure to stop road accidents and trail of death on the expressway would turn into a sort of ‘disgrace’ for this highway, a milestone of road communication development in the country. And that’s not desirable in any possible way.