Road Safety Coalition Bangladesh on Thursday urged the interim government to enact a separate road safety law to reduce the number of road crashes.
They also urged the government to make a promise to halve the number of road crashes by 2030 at the forthcoming international conference on road safety, said a press release issued by the coalition.
At a press conference, speakers also expressed concern over increase in road crashes in the country and emphasis was given on training of the drivers.
The alliance held the press conference at the National Press Club ahead of the fourth Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety to be held in Marrakech in Morocco on February 18 to 20.
At the event, the coalition raised their expectations to the interim government as some representatives of the government are scheduled to join the Morocco conference.
While reading a paper, Nirapad Sarak Chai chairman Ilias Kanchan said that the then government had imposed speed limits on motor vehicles in 2024 which were yet to be implemented due to lack of guidelines.
Even after enactment of the Road Transport Act 2018, deaths of people in road crashes became normal incidents due to the absence of road safety issues in that law, he continued.聽
He urged the government to enact a separate road safety law by including five facilities 鈥� multimodal transportation system and proper land use, safe road infrastructure, safe vehicles, safe road users, and post-crash facilities.
Ilias Kanchan also called on the government to prepare guidelines for speed limits and for using motorcycle helmets. 聽聽
The paper read that according to the World Health Organisation鈥檚 鈥楪lobal status report on road safety 2023 an estimated 31,578 people were killed in Bangladesh in road crashes in 2021.
The WHO data also showed that the number of road traffic fatalities in Bangladesh in 2015 was 21,316 and in 2018 was 24,944.
The UN health organisation also mentioned in its report that the data obtained from the government showed that road traffic fatalities in 2015 were 2,538, in 2018 were 2,376 and in 2021 were 5,084.
Bangladesh is bound to reduce the number of road crashes by 50 per cent by 2030 since 2021 following the National Road Safety Action Plan (2021-2024), the coalition report also read.
The coalition also urged the interim government to establish a central database for preserving all road crash data.聽
The press conference was conducted by Nirapad Sarak Chai vice-chairman Liton Ershad and attended by BRAC road safety programme manager Khalid Mahmud, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication chief executive officer AHM Bazlur Rahman, Steps executive director Ranjan Karmakar, Dhaka International University associate professor Md Bazlur Rahman, Centre for Injury Prevention and Research Bangladesh鈥檚 road safety project manager Kazi Burhan Uddin and representatives from Dhaka Ahsania Mission and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, among others.
