'Encourage women into driving profession'
Women can do better than men in the driving profession as females are more cautious while driving, said Communications and Railways Minister Obaidul Quader yesterday.
He said females do not smoke, talk over mobile phones or overtake while driving. So they should be encouraged to join the driving profession, which can be a respectable job for them.
He was addressing as chief guest the launching programme of a Brac driving school, an initiative of Brac's road safety programme, at Uttara in the capital.
Considering the dismal state of drivers training in the country, National Road Safety Council decided that the Bangladesh Army, Brac and Accident Research Institute of Buet, in collaboration with Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, will train the driving instructors and provide road safety training to in-service drivers, says a Brac press release.
Brac engaged Hubert Ebner (India) Pvt Ltd, a Delhi-based Indo-Austrian organisation with 30 years experience in road safety, to prepare the training materials and conduct the training of driving trainers recruited by them.
The Brac driving school will offer 18 days training to its school trainers, 12 days training to private driving school instructors, 24 days basic driving training to the youths' section of the population for employment abroad, and 2 days road safety and defensive driving training for in-service professional drivers.
Brac Executive Director of Dr Mahbub Hossain, in the press release, said, “We can initiate this project as a private-public partnership project and, later on, jointly expand the functions with the government.”
Cars are responsible for two to three percent of accidents in western countries where as the percentage is as high as 70% in Bangladesh, said actor Ilias Kanchan.
Brac Road Safety Programme Director-in-Charge A Najmul Hussein, in his presentation, said that the country has 16 lakh registered vehicles and 10 lakh licensed drivers at current.
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