Traffic rules
Photo: A.M.Ahad / driknews
Dhaka is an over populated city with 8% area allocated for roads, whereas an ideal city should have 25%. Official figures put the population of Dhaka at around 9.3 million (but we all know how wrong it is), which makes it the fourth most populated city in the world. And the end result is the endless tailbacks at the traffic signals, which we have all fallen victims to. In the past the DMP had realised that their age old methods of handling traffic were not going to work in our beloved city. So, they welcomed the new age of traffic control, where mystical automatic traffic lights were dictating the flow of traffic. And the traffic police only made sure that people obeyed these strange lights. Well, it was going smooth, people started liking it. Then, something happened around the first or second week of last December. People were not following the automatic traffic lights anymore. And the enforcers were not doing anything about it. And once again, everything went out of control. After that came the lane system. The DMP decided to allocate different lanes for different kinds of vehicles. They fined any violators, and in fact, if my memory serves right, they handed out fines of more than Tk. 1 lakh in just one day. I think it is good that DMP has decided to do something about the traffic. But I suggest they stop playing with our lives. Sometimes I feel like a mouse in some kind of a weird experiment. It is time to get some real experts who will provide proper solutions to our problems and make sure that the plan is put to use in every last detail.
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