Editorial
A ride through hell
Putting lives into unsafe hands
A prominent Bangla daily has published a very revealing news story. Based on first-hand experience of a minibus ride by two assigned reporters, it has, in fact, brought us up to date with the very high risks public mobility is exposed to on a daily basis.The graphic descriptions of the booby-traps are amply confirmatory of the one-liner one often hears after an accident: it was just waiting to happen. Most of the accidents are no longer accidents these days; the fortuitousness is mostly gone. They are man-made and, therefore, fit to be called manslaughter. Buses and minibuses are the worst culprits purring on the engines as they take in passengers and overloading the jalopies even at the very start. Then on the way they would be shoving in more passengers making several stops in disdainful defiance of regulation stoppages. The driver will be frequently staring back at the minibus or bus approaching from the rear. Frightful of being overtaken on the time-table delinquently overshot by passenger pickings earlier on they would overspeed in dangerous arcs now turning left and then swerving to the right in constant serpentine motions. The findings are, indeed, devastating. On various city routes offences like arbitrary pulling over, reckless speeding contest even through an extremely busy thoroughfare, are daily committed, let alone untrained hands on the steering wheels with little or no knowledge of traffic rules, and drug or alcohol addicts on the drivers' seats -- all under the very nose of traffic authorities. To top it off, as one police officer has stated that during a decade into his service life, he has not seen any one having been punished because of a road accident. Punitive justice is missing. The sheer number of buses and mini-buses on the city streets is a major contributory factor for the high incidence of road accidents. Over the last one year bus routes have swelled from 34 to 56; compared to 831 such vehicles in 2001 the number has now reached the 7000-mark. The road network comprising only 8 percent of the metropolitan landmass in stark contrast to the stipulated 25 percent, the scenario is horrendously accident-prone. The saddest part of it all is that the plentiful recommendations for setting things right remain comprehensively unmatched by implementation.
| 
