Half A Million Vehicles Have Fitness Issues: BRTA

Bangladesh has more than half a million expired and non-fit vehicles, according to Nur Mohammad Mazumder, chairman of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).

Speaking at a programme marking National Road Safety Day on Tuesday (October 17), he said 30 percent of those vehicles do not operate on the streets, but the ones that do contribute to road accidents.

At the same time, vehicles running at high speed on improved roads, flyovers and the elevated expressway are also causing more road accidents. Mazumder pointed out inconsistencies in the number of road accidents collected from different organisations.

“We are publishing information on accidents on our website. We’ve been collecting the actual data for about a year. So the actual number [of road accidents] is statistically higher. A road safety project of the World Bank is also underway.”

The BRTA chairman also mentioned that the number of executive magistrates employed to supervise roads was “not enough”.

“They’ve been given a target to file cases, and six magistrates will be assigned to six divisional cities. We’ve begun adding demerit points to drivers on charges of speeding and accidents,” he said.

“We’ve arranged for testing the eyes, blood pressure and random blood sugar for drivers at different bus terminals in the country and BRTA professional training centres.”

“This showed us that most drivers were suffering from high blood pressure and eyesight issues. That is leading to unwanted accidents. We also found issues with pupils contracting in many drivers.”

He said the diagnosis of 249 drivers showed 47 had blood pressure problems, 69 had blood sugar issues, and 109 others had smoking complications. Of them, 164 had eyesight issues, while 59 had various other problems, with eight suffering from difficulty relating to contraction of the pupils.

On Oct 22, different locations in Dhaka will be decorated with road safety messages and public awareness leaflets and stickers will be distributed among the people.