Four-year-old Ibrahim Islam was walking to his school in Kushtia town with his grandmother around 8:00am on Sunday. Perhaps his mind was buzzing with excitement, thinking about the games he would play with his friends.

The school, Prititi Biddyaloy, is in the Phultola area next to the Kushtia-Jhenaidah highway. Walking across the highway, they stopped on the median strip. Just as they stepped on the road again, a truck ran them over. Ibrahim died on the spot and his grandmother suffered serious injuries.

"My son wanted to be a pilot," his mother Jasmine cried beside his lifeless body at Kushtia General Hospital. In the blink of an eye, her hopes and dreams have been shredded and life turned upside down.

This is just one of the countless tragedies happening on Bangladesh's roads every day, leaving families torn apart and stealing futures in an instant. The human toll from the crashes is incalculable, extending beyond personal grief, affecting the economy and public confidence in the transport system.

Every day, newspapers and TVs report road crashes and fatalities, often accompanied by harrowing images. Yet, these tragedies have become so routine that they rarely spark an outrage. Despite numerous laws and occasional crackdowns, the grim reality remains unchanged: the country's roads and highways remain plagued by disorder and lawlessness.

According to a report by road safety campaigner Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, around 1.05 lakh people were killed and 1.49 lakh others were injured in 60,980 crashes from 2013-2024. Of those who got killed, 8,067 were children.

However, the actual number of fatalities is likely to be much higher because many of the crashes often go unreported.

The report, launched in October last year, said 88,127 vehicles were involved in the crashes. The highest, 37.59 percent, of the crashes happened on regional highways and 31.76 percent on national highways.

What is more worrying is the spike in the road crashes and casualties.

In another report, the Jatri Kalyan Samity on January 4 said there were 6,359 crashes, 8,543 deaths, and 12,608 injuries in 2024, compared to 6,261 crashes, 7,902 deaths, and 10,372 injuries in 2023.

Motorcycles were involved in nearly one-third of all crashes, said the platform.

The sheer number of deaths on Bangladesh's roads exposes a glaring lack of governance and deep systemic flaws in the transport sector. The causes of these tragedies are well known: reckless driving, dilapidated roads, weak enforcement of traffic laws, and the unchecked presence of unfit vehicles and unqualified drivers. Unregulated transport syndicates operate with impunity while political influence shields wrongdoers from law.

Over the years, successive governments have attempted to address the issue through ad-hoc interventions like traffic awareness campaigns and crackdowns on unfit vehicles. However, these measures only provided temporary relief. The previous Awami League government's effort to enforce a law, enacted in response to public outrage following the 2018 student protests demanding safer roads, failed to bring about any meaningful change. The law's implementation was delayed and ultimately weakened by opposition from transport owners and workers.

After the fall of the Awami League government in the wake of a mass uprising, there has been a growing public expectation for a long-overdue overhaul of the transport sector. Sadly, apart from sporadic drives to fine unfit vehicles, the interim government has yet to take meaningful steps to make the roads safer. Road safety campaigners have already called for the establishment of a Road Safety Commission, arguing that the era of superficial solutions and temporary fixes must end.

The reform commissions tasked with addressing various sectors have offered a glimmer of hope for systemic changes. The transport sector deserves the same level of attention given its profound impact on millions of lives. The interim government now has an opportunity to pave the way for real reform by treating road safety as a national priority. Bangladesh urgently needs a comprehensive, data-driven strategy to make its roads safer. Establishing a Road Safety Commission would be a bold and necessary step toward that goal, ensuring that road safety is no longer a neglected issue but a top concern.

We cannot afford to let more precious lives be lost due to negligence and mismanagement. The transport sector cannot continue to operate at the whims of a few syndicates. Without structural reforms, the cycle of preventable deaths and injuries will persist, and each delay in action will only add to the growing toll of tragedies. The question remains: How many more lives must be lost before real, lasting change takes place?