Over six lakh registered motor vehicles are currently running around the country without updating their mandatory fitness certificates despite repeated bans on their movement.
The highest number of such vehicles is three-wheeler auto-rickshaws that are a major reason behind fatal road crashes, according to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority.
Amid the rush of travellers across the country for the celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr, the movement of these vehicles has been a likely reason for fatal road crashes, observed road safety experts.
They also said that the BRTA should be held accountable for the movement of vehicles without fitness on roads.聽
Apart from public transports, including buses, minibuses, and human haulers, a significant number of these unfit vehicles are goods-carriers and private ones.
These vehicles run across the country, including the Dhaka city.
Often after fatal road crashes it was found that the vehicles were running without updated fitness certificates.
Most recently, five people, including four passengers and the driver of a CNG-run auto-rickshaw, were killed and two others injured following a head-on collision between a bus and the auto-rickshaw at Baharpur under Ishwardi upazila in Pabna on March 20.
The fitness certificate of the Volka Paribahan bus had already expired on December 21, 2024 and the same day BRTA had temporarily suspended the bus鈥檚 registration.
Professor Md Shamsul Hoque, director of the Accident Research Institute at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said that during Eid journeys not only vehicles without fitness but also many old and damaged vehicles were being repaired to put these on roads for extra earnings.
Unskilled drivers engaged behind the steering render the situation worse, he also said.
鈥楾he BRTA must be held accountable for letting the vehicles without updated fitness certificates run on roads,鈥� he said, seeking structural reform in the institutions like police and BRTA for positive changes.
The BRTA website showed that, until mid-March this year, a total of 62.96 lakh motor vehicles were registered under the road transport authority.聽
Of these vehicles, 6.11 lakh did not go through the mandatory annual fitness test and were categorised as unfit.
The High Court on August 3, 2015 issued a directive to the road transport ministry and the police to keep unfit motor vehicles off the roads.
Following a High Court order issued on March 28, 2019, the BRTA submitted a report to the court, which read that at least 4.79 lakh vehicles on the roads did not have updated fitness certificates as of July 2019.
The number was 5.08 lakh in January 2022 and it increased to 6.17 lakh in April 2024.
Currently, among the unfit vehicles, the highest 2.05 lakh are auto-rickshaws followed by 73,007 private cars, 72,159 pickups, 57,041 trucks, 39,591 tractors, 30,538 microbuses, 20,868 buses, 14,386 human haulers and 11,185 minibuses.
Since August 1, 2015, the road transport and bridges ministry has imposed a ban on three-wheelers and non-motorised vehicles on national highways.
The home ministry earlier in 2010, in a directive, banned unregistered battery-run three-wheelers called 鈥榚asy bikes鈥�.
A Passenger Welfare Association of Bangladesh report shows that 8,543 people were killed and 12,608 others injured in 6,359 road crashes across Bangladesh in 2024.
Vehicles, including unauthorised battery-powered rickshaws, easy bikes, improvised three-wheelers like nasimon, karimon, Mahindra, and laguna accounted for the second highest -- around 24 per cent -- crashes, behind only motorcycles, which were responsible for 36.62 per cent accidents.
About the movement of unfit vehicles on roads, BRTA chairman Md Yeasin said that they regularly conduct mobile courts to take action against them, including scraping such vehicles.
