Editorial
Accidents taking heavier toll
Preventive action sorely missing
Road accidents on Friday alone, causing 15 deaths, do remind us again of how perilous our highways and city roads have become. Despite the change of communication minister, road or highway safety conditions remain as abysmal ascribable to poor patrolling and a blind eye turned to reckless driving.
Eight people on the Dhaka-Sylhet highway and five people on the Gaibandha-Palashbari highway were killed in accidents. Both these accidents were due to collisions with speeding trucks, one head-on and the other from the rear-end. In the city, however, two journalists including English daily The Independent's senior reporter Bibhas Chandra Saha, were killed having been hit and run over by city buses. Evidently, the accidents on the highways as well as on city roads were caused by rash driving.
Reckless driving is fed on a sense of impunity since drivers, after perpetrating a crime, often make good their escape, and even if they are arrested for murder, which is a bailable offence, face three years of imprisonment at best. Clearly, this law falls short of addressing the gravity of a crime that claims numerous innocent lives every year, including some of our most talented artists and journalists. We demand that the responsible drivers be arrested and punished immediately. We also think the existing law should be revised so as to make the punishment compatible with the gravity of this crime.
The Accident Research Institute (ARI) of BUET has emphasised on several occasions that road crashes can be cut down to less than half if dividers are set up on all roads and highways. We believe that time has come for the communications minister to heed the ARI suggestions because it is his integrity and honest image on which people in general pin their hope for secure road journey.
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