The Cumilla crash exposes a systemic failure

The video of a crash in Cumilla last month presents the horrifying portrait of a system in collapse. The grainy, time-stamped frames on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway shows a sedan making a lawful turn and a colossal covered van losing its battle with physics, resulting in a catastrophic crush of metal. Then comes the frantic escape of the driver—not a portrait of evil, but a rational calculation in a system where accountability is absent and survival demands flight.

The Cumilla tragedy, which claimed four lives, is more than a news story. It is a live autopsy of the state's governance failure. It exposes the broken code beneath our asphalt, written in the language of corruption, institutional neglect, and disregard for human life.

To fix this, we must move beyond easy outrage over "reckless drivers." That is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is technical, political, and deeply systemic. Our roads mirror the state's priorities, and they are designed less for citizen safety than for profit. As Paul Virilio observed, inventing the highway means inventing the highway disaster. In Bangladesh, we have engineered a particular disaster—optimised for failure through deliberate policy choices and technical neglect.

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Let us break down the crash sequence not as a traffic incident, but as a policy failure.

First, the infrastructure deficit. That U-turn near Hotel Nurjahan was not fate; it was poor planning. It was a known black spot, a flaw hardwired into the design. Our roads are built for ideal conditions, not for real human behaviour. We leave under-construction flyovers to narrow lanes but fail to install temporary calming measures. We design highways as straight-line racetracks interrupted by deadly conflict points. The engineering is blind to human error—a profound technical failure.

Second, the vehicle ecosystem. The cement-laden van flipped not only due to speed. Although the actual causes have not been verified yet, many such vehicles crashed in the past due to weight distribution and poor maintenance. Regulatory bodies meant to ensure vehicle fitness—checking for overloading, faulty brakes, and rotten suspensions—are complicit or powerless. The commercial transport economy runs on overloading and skipped maintenance; it is more profitable to risk a fine than to operate safely. Policy incentivises death. When a driver knowingly operates a hazardous vehicle, he is making a rational economic choice within a broken system—a choice designed for him.

Third, the enforcement architecture. The most telling image is the driver's escape. He ran because he knew he could. The odds of being caught, prosecuted, and held accountable are vanishingly small. Enforcement is sporadic, theatrical, and often corrupt. It functions as negotiation, not deterrence. A traffic police force is not only about issuing fines; it is the citizen's most visible interaction with the rule of law. When this becomes transactional, it signals that laws are optional for those with cash or connections.

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Here theory meets tarmac. This is not random chaos, but a textbook case of the "tragedy of the commons." The road is a shared resource—we all benefit from safety and efficiency. Yet individual actors—the bus driver taking shortcuts, the trucker overloading, the car owner double-parking—gain by cheating. The collective cost is gridlock and carnage. Preventing this requires a strong, impartial referee—the state. In Bangladesh, the referee is not merely absent; it often plays for the other team.

So, what is the way out? We need a ruthless, technical, and systemic overhaul. This is not about vague appeals to awareness but about rewriting the code.

First, engineer the roads for failure, assuming human error. Design roads that forgive mistakes. Mandate regular safety audits of all highways by independent engineers, instead of government committees. Install crash barriers, signage, automated speed cameras, and redesign lethal intersections. These are technical fixes requiring political will and capital directed to safety.

Second, fix the incentives by reforming vehicle regulation and enforcement. Remove human discretion and its corruption. Use automated weight-in-motion sensors at bridge approaches to fine-tune overloading digitally. Mandate GPS trackers in commercial vehicles to monitor speed and rest times. Make vehicle owners, not just drivers, legally liable for accidents caused by mechanical failure. Shift the calculus from "unsafe is cheaper" to "unsafe is bankrupting."

Third, build real deterrence. Modernise and depoliticise the police force for data-led enforcement. Use CCTV footage, like that which captured the Cumilla tragedy, not for viral shame but as legal evidence. Establish a dedicated highway patrol with forensic capacity to investigate crashes as crimes, not accidents. Ensure swift, transparent trials for traffic fatalities. When the state demonstrates impartial rule of law, behaviour changes. The fleeing driver is the canary in the coal mine; his escape confirms systemic failure.

The Cumilla family died not from misfortune, but from a chain of deliberate policy choices: flawed engineering, a corrupted regulatory environment, and a culture of impunity sanctioned from above. Mourning them is not enough. We must demand a cold, technical revolution on our roads—governance built not on connections and chaos, but on data, design, and deterrence.

The road is a test—the simplest, most daily measure of whether the state can perform its basic duty: to protect its people. Right now, we are failing. Yet the blueprint for success is clear, if we have the courage to read it.

Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu. He can be reached at [email protected].

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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