Dear Editor, -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Road traffic casualties can be prevented Ripan Kumar Biswas Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com Two people were killed and three others injured in separate road accidents in Dinajpur and Munshiganj on July 11, 2008. On July 10, six people were killed and 44 others injured in separate road accidents in Mymensingh, Sirajganj, and Satkhira. There was coverage almost in every print and electronic media in The World Health Organization (WHO) says, every year 1.2 million people die in road accidents - making it, according to WHO's 2002 calculations, the seventh biggest killer in the world, ahead of diabetes and malaria. The WHO predicted that between 2000 and 2015 road accidents would cause 20 million deaths, 200 million serious injuries, and would leave more than one billion people killed, injured, bereaved, or left to care for a victim. It also predicted that by 2020 road deaths would become the number three killer, behind heart disease and suicide, although Aids is now a much bigger threat than when that forecast was made. Traffic collisions are at epidemic levels in many states and there seems to be a widespread acceptance that they are an inevitable consequence of ever-increasing mobility. Failure to act could not only double the number by 2020, but would see injuries from road traffic placed at the third highest contributor to the global burden of disease and injuries. In the process of assisting accident victims, many have been wrongly carried which led to permanent disability and in some occasion death. Road crashes, causing death, injury, and damage have always happened. But road accidents in According to the Police Headquarters of Bangladesh, 3,749 people were killed and 3,273 injured in 4,869 road accidents across the country last year while the dead and injured was 3,193 and 2,409 in 3,794 accidents in 2006 and 3,187 and 2,754 in 3,954 accidents in 2005. About 15,000 people suffered injuries last year and many of them ended up being physically disabled and eventually jobless. In financial terms, the accidents inflict a severe damage — no less than Tk 5,000 crore annually or about 2 percent of the total GDP. The value we place on human lives here is discouraging, crude, outdated, and ungodly. Last several days in the roads of "Road traffic deaths and injuries place an enormous strain on a country's health care systems and on the national economy in general," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on the occasion of the First UN Global Road Safety Week on April 23-29, 2007. Based on his report on the road safety crisis (A/62/257) prepared by WHO and the UN Road Safety Collaboration and sponsored by more than 90 countries, a new draft resolution entitled Improving Global Road Safety (A/62/L.43) had been adopted unanimously at the UN General Assembly in According to the UN chief, road safety will not happen by accident. We need to understand that accidents do not happen that accidentally. There most of the time invited either by our carelessness or by the carelessness of someone else. We have to learn to live with caution. It can happen at any time to anyone. Accident is no longer the issue of the ones who get involved in it.
In order to prevent road fatalities, police organizations all across the world should implement various enforcement programmes (random breath testing, sobriety checkpoints, random road watch, photo-radar, mixed programmes and red-light cameras) that are designed to deter deviant driving behaviors, which significantly increase the risks of serious accidents.
Because such casualties not only created socio-economic expenses for victims and their families, they also placed an onerous burden on public health services. The annual costs associated with road traffic injuries worldwide amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars and continued to rise. It was vitally important to reduce the number of traffic injuries in order to achieve socio-economic development and to allow ordinary people to feel safe and secure when on the road. There is a growing recognition that road traffic injuries can be prevented. Because prevention measures require political will and financial investments, decisions to improve road safety need to be made at the highest levels of Government. While we welcome the Government's effort to reduce accidents on the road, we would like the Government to be more professional and scientific in its approach. Nonetheless, many organizations and Governments have chosen to face this challenge. Indeed, mentalities are changing as regard to road safety: road accident fatalities are no longer accepted as an inevitable corollary of increased mobility. Beyond government ministries of transport, health and education, many others have a role to play: parents and guardians, educators, community and business leaders, automobile associations, insurers and vehicle manufacturers, celebrities and the media, survivors of road traffic crashes and their families. In conclusion, it is possible to control the epidemic of road traffic injuries/death through strict policy implementations, mass media education, and a national traffic campaign to increase safety on the highways.
July 12, 2008, Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in |
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