A REPORT that Dhaka鈥檚 north city authorities and the city police have prepared says that about 61 per cent of all fatal victims of road accidents that took place in the areas under the north city authority jurisdiction in 2023 were pedestrians. The report was made public at a meeting on road safety that the Road Transport and Highways Division and the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety organised in Dhaka on April 16. Whilst the finding suggests that there have been serious problems of the authorities鈥� managing roads and traffic, the report also finds that motorcyclists, accounting for 24 per cent, are the second largest fatal victims of the road accidents. This also suggests inadequacy in road traffic management. The report further says that buses and trucks were the deadliest vehicles on the roads in the capital as most of the pedestrians who died in the accidents were hit by buses. In 2023, 117 fatal road accidents were reported which left 123 people dead. The study collected data from the first information reports and complaints filed with the 25 police stations under the jurisdiction of the Dhaka North City Corporation.
There is no apparent reason for the situation to have improved much now in 2025, two years after the report at hand was prepared. And, although the data used in the report for 2023 are based on the fatal accidents only in part of the capital city, this amply suggests what it could have been if all the fatal accidents that took place in the year across the country had been taken into account. The report also says that 58 per cent of the cases involving the death of pedestrians, they were hit by vehicles. And, 65 per cent of the cases involving the death of motorcyclists, they were hit by vehicles from behind. The figures tell the government where inadequacies lie and where it needs to put in efforts to improve on the situation. Whilst the problem majorly lies with enforcement, poor enforcement or no enforcement at all, the figures suggest that pedestrians walk down the road and are hit by vehicles. They walk down the road because the footpaths are largely all occupied or there is no footpath at all. The government needs to ensure that there are footpaths, the footpaths are not occupied and they are in a usable condition.
Whilst the government needs to step up enforcement to improve the situation, it also needs to ensure the use of footpaths by pedestrians by laying out footpaths and ensuring that they are free if it wants to stop pedestrians from dying in road accidents.