Road Safety Project

Since its independence, road development or road safety issues in Bangladesh have never been handled carefully to keep up with the rapid increase of vehicles. A reformed traffic law was in the making, but it was constantly pushed back due to strong opposition from transport workers and owners. However, a nationwide students protest following some tragic deaths by speeding vehicles couple of years backed paved the way for a new law. After much delay and drama, the new Road Transport Act 2018 was finally enacted. Nevertheless, accidents on the roads have not really stopped or decreased, which to a large extent is due to loopholes in the law as well as its lack of implementation.

A statistic by the World Life Expectancy puts Bangladesh in 106th position among 183 countries in terms of having the most road accident-related deaths. In the first eight months of 2021, a total of 3,502 people were killed and 3,479 sustained injuries in 3,701 road accidents (The Business Standard, 27 November 2021).  According to the Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity data, a total of 4,891 accidents in 2020 resulted in 6,686 deaths and 8,600 injuries. The figures for 2021 documented 5,629 accidents, leading to 7,809 deaths and 9,039 injuries, and the records for 2022 show 6,749 accidents, causing 9,951 fatalities and 12,356 injuries. The Road Safety Foundation’s report shows 4,693 road accidents causing 5,211 deaths and 7,103 injuries in the inaugural year. This trend continued with 4,735 road accidents in 2020, resulting in 5,431 fatalities and 7,379 injuries. In 2021, there were 5,371 road accidents causing 6,284 deaths and 7,468 injuries, and in 2022, the foundation’s report indicates 6,829 road accidents leading to 7,713 fatalities and 12,615 injuries.

Keeping this in mind, Steps Towards Development is keen to work on road safety in an attempt to improve the scenario and saving valuable lives. Broadly, the purpose of the project is to influence policy and laws for strengthening road safety. Steps’ mandate is to ensure incorporating gender equality in Comprehensive Road Safety Law and its implementation in Bangladesh. Steps’ observation revealed that there are active civil society groups that are working for road safety. However, there very few active participation of survivors, affected family members and media activists, who can do advocacy works on voluntary basis. Moreover, there are also a lack of skilled and knowledge-based policy influence groups and absence of continuous evidence-based advocacy and actions. Steps will involve these groups in its awareness and campaign activities for policy influence at the local level. Side by side, Steps will do joint advocacy at the national level and networking at local level for enacting a comprehensive gender responsive road safety act.

In this project, Steps will take interventions in association with the stakeholders like survivors of road crash, affected families, youth volunteers and media for awareness raising and policy influence. In addition, Steps will engage Parliament/Cabinet members and representatives of relevant departments/directorates to create a pressure on the government to enact a comprehensive law and ensure stricter provisions, as it believes that the exiting law is not helping much to prevent road crashes, rather working as a tool to give punishment after crashes occur. Thousands of people die or injure each year on the roads and tens of thousands others suffer, especially the women and children who are dependents of the deceased/injured persons. Therefore, Steps will involve them in the process to create a large campaign and loud voice to prevent and decrease road crashes. Side by side, road user behavioral risk factors in Bangladesh will also be addressed in the proposed activities. Thus, Steps will support the Government of Bangladesh to enact a gender-responsive comprehensive road safety law to achieve the commitment of ensuring a safer road for the people of Bangladesh.