Call to ensure road safety
Families United Against Road Accident (FUARA), an organisation of road accident victims' families, stage a several kilometer long street march in the city yesterday as part of road safety awareness campaign.Photo: STAR
Several hundred people carrying placards and photographs of road crash victims yesterday staged a several kilometer long street march in the city as part of road safety campaign amid reports of growing road accidents. Family members and friends of a number of road crash victims joined the procession organized by cultural personality and parliamentarian Tarana Halim, whose nephew also was recently killed in an accident. “The existing law should be amended to ensure adequate punishment of 'killer drivers',” Tarana told a brief rally ahead of the start of the march from in front of Jatiya Press Club to Aminbazar area at the city outskirts. She alleged weakness in laws and their weak enforcements largely contributed to the growth of road accidents. Tarana Halim, Ekram Ahmed, Member of editorial board of the daily Samakal Ajoy Das Gupta and Prof Nazrul Islam of Sher-e-Bangla Agriculture University and Syfiya Bugem, mother of Farjana Hossain Silvia who was killed in a road accident, among others, spoke on the occasion. Nearly 500 deaths on a stretch of 12,000 kilometres highways in only six months until August this year ranked Bangladesh high in the list of countries with high road crash fatalities caused by all possible factors. “All the reasons which can cause road crashes are there in Bangladesh,” director of the Accident Research Institute of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) Mohammad Shamsul Haque told BSS recently as the police headquarters released the report three months ago. He said in terms of number of vehicles compared to population Bangladesh ranked in the bottom of the list while in terms accident frequency the country position was second after Nepal. According to the statistics of the police headquarters, 2,958 people were killed in 3,381 road accidents across the country in 2009, 3,765 in 2008 and 3,749 in 2007 while 500 deaths were recorded in highways alone in between February and August 2010.
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