Safe road for all times, not just a fortnight

The death of two college students on 29 July in the city last year led to an outpour of angry protest by school and college students. They came out in thousands on the streets, calling upon the government to ensure safe roads. But the police and the ruling party thugs resorted to violence to drive them off the streets. The young ones received no justice for being mistreated in such a manner, when all they had been doing was protesting peacefully. And so the statements by the government about restoring order to the streets and the fanfare around the police drive to ensure road safety, fails to inspire confidence.

After the students’ road safety movement in August last year, the police had a grandiose ‘traffic awareness month’ which, as even the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) commissioner admitted, was a failure. There has been no visible review or assessment of reasons behind the failure. It is one of our fundamental weaknesses that initiatives are never followed up by any proper review and the quarters responsible for the failure are never held accountable. Year after year there are assurances, drives and all sorts of activities, but the death march on the roads simply grows longer.
And now DMP has undertaken a 15-day traffic fortnight from Tuesday. On that very day, 11 deaths in road accidents were reported from all around the country. The day before that, the death toll on the roads was 10. The DMP traffic fortnight is taking place in the capital city alone, but road accidents are a national problem. If it is to be solved, the authorities all around the country must make sincere efforts to this end.
The ongoing traffic fortnight in the capital includes distributing leaflets to raise the awareness of drivers and passengers, sticking awareness-raising messages on vehicles, motivating pedestrians to use foot over-bridges to cross the roads, taking action against buses that halt anywhere other than the designated bus stops and setting up police check posts at certain points.
It has also been said that roads which have been occupied unlawfully will be reclaimed to ensure proper use of the traffic-related physical infrastructure. All of these are good and necessary initiatives, but are not matters to be enforced just for two weeks. The drive must be a permanent one. It won’t work out if the bus just halts to pick and and drop passengers at the proper bus stops for two weeks, but then slip back into their old ways once the fortnight is over.
Traffic laws must be enforced and followed all the time. Violations of the law must be punished. It has become a norm to drive on the wrong side of the road and commit other such violations. If this is to be ended, then zero tolerance must be exercised against any road rule violation. And stern measures must be taken against corrupt traffic police. The first step of restoring traffic discipline should be wielding the law against all violators, regardless of whether they are powerless or powerful.