Absence of desired public awareness, lack of proper road design, maintenance and a sound traffic system, as well as a rise in the number of vehicles and an inadequate road network are also responsible for many accidents.

Every year 10,000-12,000 lives are lost due to road accidents, which is much higher than police records show, says the study conducted by the Accident Research Centre (ARC) of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

The study, however, contained no figures of injuries in road accidents.

"When a person succumbs to his or her injuries due to a road accident, it cannot be viewed only from an economic point of view. Rather, it has a huge implication for the victim's family. So, we considered all these things in our study," Director of the ARC Prof Mazharul Hoque told The Daily Star.

In the four metropolitan cities--Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi--buses, minibuses and trucks, while constituting only four percent of motorised vehicles, are nonetheless responsible for about 90 percent of accidents, the study said.

In the Dhaka metropolitan area, the number of motorised vehicles registered with the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) is about 7,87,000. Of this, buses and minibuses number about 65,000.

Another study, conducted by the Road Safety Cell (RSC) of the BRTA, said about 24,000 fatal and grievous road accidents took place across the country in the last eight years, causing injuries to over 1.5 lakh people. It gave no estimate of deaths.

The number of road accidents in Bangladesh has doubled over the last eight years, and is higher than in other Saarc countries.

In Bangladesh, the number of "fatalities per 10,000 vehicles" is 44. The number is 20 in India, 17 in Pakistan, 25 in Sri Lanka and 4 in Bhutan, the study mentioned.

Prof Mazharul said strict enforcement of traffic rules, increasing awareness among people and vehicle drivers and expansion of the road network could reduce road accidents.

Referring to a report of the Orthopaedic Hospital (Pangu Hospital), he mentioned that 56 percent of patients at the hospital's emergency wing are road accident victims.

Many accidents are neither reported in newspapers nor recorded by the police, the ARC director pointed out.

On the RSC's road accident statistics, a BRTA director said the fact is that the number of accidents is much higher. "Plying of unfit vehicles and reckless driving are two major causes of road accidents," he said, seeking anonymity.

He admitted that irregularities of a section of the BRTA officials in issuing driving licences and fitness certificates also lead to many road accidents.

BRTA Chairman Faruk Ahmed could not be contacted.

Meanwhile, Ansaruddin Khan Pathan, deputy commissioner of traffic, Dhaka Metropolitan Police, claimed police are very active in enforcing traffic rules.

"But the number of traffic rule violations is so high that it cannot be tackled by law enforcers alone. Awareness among drivers and overall improvement of road management are necessary to curb accidents," he said in reply to a question.

Admitting that drivers are hardly punished for violating traffic rules, he said stricter punishment should be introduced.

He differed on the ARC statistics about the number of deaths in road accidents and said police records last year showed 2,968 deaths due to accidents.