Special Correspondent; Dbarta24 — At least 416 people were killed and 629 others injured in 458 road accidents across Bangladesh in July, according to a report released by the Road Safety Foundation (RSF) on Thursday.
The casualties included 57 women and 48 children, with motorcycle crashes accounting for over a third of the total deaths.
The findings, compiled using data from nine national dailies, 17 national and regional news portals, electronic media, and RSF’s independent tracking, highlight that the highest frequency of crashes occurred during the morning hours.
Motorcycles and Highways Lead Mortality Rates
Motorcycle crashes remained the single deadliest category, claiming 138 lives. Passengers of three-wheelers recorded the second-highest mortality count, with 94 deaths.
Fatalities were also reported among passengers of locally assembled vehicles, buses, trucks, covered vans, and pickups.
The majority of accidents took place on high-speed corridors:
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National Highways: 169 accidents
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Regional Roads: 155 accidents
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Rural Roads: 61 accidents
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City Roads: 66 accidents
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Other Locations: 7 accidents
An analysis of crash dynamics showed that drivers losing control of their vehicles was the primary cause of accidents, resulting in 164 incidents.
Head-on collisions accounted for 123 cases, pedestrians being run over or struck comprised 108 incidents, and rear-end collisions made up 54 cases.
Peak Hours and Regional Distribution
Time-of-day tracking revealed that morning hours were the most dangerous, accounting for 28.82% of all accidents recorded during the month.
Nighttime crashes followed at 19.43%, while afternoon and late afternoon hours accounted for 17.24% and 14.84% respectively. Twilight and early dawn recorded relatively lower accident rates.
Geographically, the Dhaka Division reported the highest casualties, recording 133 accidents and 125 deaths. The Chattogram Division also registered high incident rates, while the Barishal Division recorded the lowest casualty rate with 24 fatalities across 28 accidents. Within the capital city of Dhaka, 34 road accidents led to 18 deaths and 47 injuries.
The victims spanned diverse socio-economic backgrounds, including 53 students from various educational institutions, political activists, business owners, NGO workers, banking and insurance staff, sales representatives, teachers, and journalists.
Systemic Causes and Policy Recommendations
According to the Road Safety Foundation, the persistent high fatality rates are driven by faulty vehicles, poor road infrastructure, reckless driving, driver incompetence, lack of designated working hours and fixed salaries, unauthorized low-speed vehicles on national highways, reckless motorcycle riding by youths, and poor traffic law compliance.
Weak traffic management, institutional capacity constraints within the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), and extortion in the public transport sector were also cited as contributing factors.
To curb road fatalities, the RSF recommended restructuring the National Road Safety Council, executing structural reforms in the BRTA, BRTC, and DTCA, phasing out unfit vehicles, and mandating modern vehicular safety technologies.
Additional recommendations include developing skilled drivers through formal training, fixing driver pay and working hours, constructing dedicated service lanes for slow-moving vehicles on highways, and deploying gatekeepers at all railway level crossings.