Staff Reporter:
A total of 8,505 people were killed and 10,999 others injured in 6929 road, rail and waterways accidents across the country in 2023, according to Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity, a passengers’ welfare plat-form.
It means fatalities declined significantly year-on-year, almost 15 percent, from the 9,951 witnessed in 2022, even though accidents inched up slightly, by 2.7%, from the 6,749 in 2022.
Md Mozammel Haque Chowdhury, general secretary of the platform, presented their new report at a press conference at DRU yesterday.
The total deaths include 512 people killed in 520 railway accidents and also 91 deaths from 148 acci-dents on waterways.
The report claims that the number of registered motorbikes and human haulers have increased almost 5-fold since JKS started its work in the sector. It also blamed unauthorised vehicles, including three-wheelers and easy bikes, plying on highways and regional roads for the increased number of accidents and deaths on those roads.
The report claims that 34.86% of the road accidents – not counting waterways and rail – occurred on na-tional highways, followed by 28.5% on regional roads.
Reckless driving, risky overtaking, dilapidated roads, unfit vehicles, unskilled drivers, using mobile phones or headphones and drugs while driving and lack of awareness, occupation of pavements, viola-tion of traffic rules among road users were cited as main reasons behind road crashes.
