25 individuals killed and a further 23 injured in a single bus accident as it swerved off the road and hit a tree on the Dhaka-Barisal highway on April 9. After colliding with the tree, the bus plunged into a ditch. Going by what data has been compiled by this newspaper since January, 2015 based on reports, there have been 396 confirmed deaths and the number of injured stands at three short of the 700 mark. These are not mere samples on a database, rather they are or were people who have either been killed or maimed in various ways. They were unfortunate enough to be passengers on vehicles that ply in their thousands on our 
unsafe highways.

The response to this incident as has been the standard response to the dozens of incidents in the recent past is the promise for action. This usually constitutes the formation of a "high level committee" that will make a probe of the incident and submit its findings to relevant authorities for further action. That bus drivers routinely drive recklessly often without licenses where the buses themselves often lack fitness certificates has become a common affair. It is also "usual" for many of our highways have neither divider nor speed breakers at crucial, accident-prone locations. Are we to assume then that human life is cheap in Bangladesh? We do not think so. Our hearts go out to those who are no longer with us because of manmade errors, errors that are rectifiable but those who have the power to do something choose to look the other way.