Surge in bike accident,
Leaves casualties with no precedent.
Cyclist-police and social credit score,
Work better than just spending crore.
Motorbike accidents have increased by 63.60% in the first ten months of this year. Road Safety Foundation has revealed it in a press conference. 1758 persons died in 1653 accidents in this time period. What is worrying 75% of the dead belonged to 14-45 years old age group.1
Not only motorbike accidents, there has been a spike in road accidents in Bangladesh. Back in February last year,I penned a piece titled “Unruly Road,Unsafe Lives”. Sharing part of it again:
As the number of vehicle plying over the road increases, so does the number of accident. Addition of new car and bus will not stop. Similarly, new asphalt roads are also being stretched out. But how can we reduce the incidence of growing number of accidents? Reducing the number of vehicle is not a pragmatic solution. Better traffic management and responsible driving could be the possible solution.
I recently delved into Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Pocket Book 2018, BBS pocket book 2016, BBS pocket book 2012, Bangladesh Economic Review 2018 and some leading dailies to gather data on casualty and registered vehicles between 2009 and 2018. Data on casualty from 2015 to 2018 gleaned mostly from leading dailies. Maybe that is the number of casualty is unusually high in this period. Meanwhile, data prior to 2015 and registered vehicles were collected from BBS pocket book , BER and Accident Research Institute,BUET. Unofficial figures may vary from official ones.
Despite the official-unofficial difference, there is no gainsaying that there has been a surge in accident between 2015 and 2018. This post does not intend to probe underlying reasons for the sudden rise in accidents. Rather it tries to underscore the gravity of the problem.
I transformed the two into natural log variables and then ran a regression between ln_casualty and ln_registered_vehicle. Since the data is time series in nature, I checked for serial correlation in the disturbance term. Luckily Durbin-Watson statistic reported no autocorrelation. (d=1.8382 prior to log natural transformation and d= 1.3638 after regression; for 10 observations and 1 explanatory variable.)
Having finished for diagnostic check, I went for analyzing the result. F-test was found to be significant(F=7.207, p= 0.027, df=1,8).Coefficient for ln_registered_vehicle turned out to be statistically significant(b2=1.37, t=2.68, p=0.027). However, the intercept was found to be statistically insignificant (b1=-10.948, t=-1.468, p=1.800).
From the given data, it appears that a 1% increase in registered vehicle contributes to a 1.37% increase in casualty number.
Certainly, I am not saying increasing number of vehicle provokes accident. The point is reckless driving and lack of enforcement of law aggravate the road accident problem. An array of posts could be churned out on what the traffic laws say. Since the objective is to capture the gravity of the problem, I am not treading that path and restrict my discussion on how worse it has become.2
Reckless driving by the bikers has been identified one of the reasons for death in roads by Road Safety Foundation report. As I regularly stroll on the streets of Dhaka, I know that every bit of that word is true. Many bikers run their bikes on footpath in a bid to reach their destination as soon as possible. In addition, empty streets often become a test ground for maneuvering their skills. Blowing horn every now and then is another sign of utter disregard for the surroundings and people. Often innocent pedestrians, napping housewives and toddlers,senior citizens bear full brunt of unwanted troubles.
Enforcing laws against biker-breacher could improve the situation. Like Thailand, Bangladesh could introduce bicycle-police in their 20’s to identify minor transgressors and oblige them to follow traffic rules. Social credit score could be another alternative. Bikers with poor social credit score may see their licenses suspended temporarily.
As we embrace the new normal on unruly roads--- unending traffic jam, agonizing working hours lost in roads, misfit drivers and vehicles, undocumented money whitening project, no respect for law---the truth is becoming clear that educating the driver , people is as relevant as enforcing the law. At the same time, all the corrupt practices, including the black money whitening project, should be put to an end without further ado.
Notes And References:
1 “ Motorbike Accidents Left 1758 Deads In 10 Months”,Bangladesh News,November 18,2021 Link here
2 “Unruly Roads, Unsafe Lives”,Rezaul Hoque,https://hoquestake.blogspot.com/, February 08,2020Link here
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