Road Safety Unit Home:
Bangladesh has a large road network comprising of National Highways, Regional Highways, Zilla (District) Roads,Upazila (Sub-district) Roads, Union Roads and Village Roads. The first three types of roads are the main arteries and the last three types of roads (termed as Rural Roads) are the veins that are connecting Growth Centers,Union HQs, and even the remotest villages of the country. These three types of road sare being upgraded and maintained by Local Government Engineering Department(LGED). LGED has so far developed 84,600 Km of rural roads (as in Dec, 2012). Bangladesh has considerable economic growth and road transport is one of the vehicles of that growth. A country having an area of 144,000 sq-km, and a population of 154million, has about estimated 0.75 million motorized vehicle and 2.15 millionnon-motorized vehicles. At the current growth the number of vehicles in the country is expected to be double in the next ten years. With the increase of vehicles and mobility of people on roads, there is also increase of road accidents. It is because of low status of enforcement, lack of awareness and lack of engineering standards of roads. The accidents claim on average 4000lives and injure another 5000 a year. The low injury rate is due to non-recording of minor injuries. The statistics reveal that in Bangladesh the fatality rate is at least 50 times higher than the rates in Western Europe and North America.
Around 70% of the people reside in rural areas and they are the main victim of road traffic accident. A study was conducted by Accident Research Institute (ARI) –Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology -+
(BUET) during the period of 1998-2010 and revealed that around 76.3% road traffic accidents occurred in rural areas and 23.7% accidents occurred in city areas. The composition of accident data is as follows:
|
Type of Road |
Type of Accident |
Total Percentage |
|
Fatal Accident |
Non-Fatal Accident |
|
National Highways |
31% |
10.7% |
41.7% |
|
Regional Highways |
9.8% |
3.3% |
13.1% |
|
Feeder Roads |
10.82% |
3.48% |
14.3% |
|
Rural Roads |
5.76% |
1.44% |
7.2% |
|
City Areas |
11.73% |
11.97% |
23.7% |
|
Total : |
69.3% |
30.7% |
100% |
* Source: ARI-BUET (Accident data only contains reported accidents to Police and Hospitals)
Road traffic accident depends on three factors;a) Engineering b) Enforcement and c) Education (Awareness). The contribution of LGED owned rural roads to total accident data of the country is only 7.2%. Therefore, LGED has the responsibility of developing engineering standards of the roads owned by the organization. At the same time, being an engineering organization at the grassroots level of the country, LGED also have significant efforts to develop awareness among the rural people who are the most victims of accidents of the country through some of its projects.
About Road Safety Unit
The Road Safety Unit has been reorganized as per new organogram of LGED. Now, the unit is a part of Road Maintenance of Road Safety Unit (RMRSU). The Road Safety Unit is headed by Superintending Engineer (Maintenance and Road Safety) and supervised by Additional Chief Engineer (Maintenance and Asset Management). Out of four Executive Engineers of RMRSU, one Executive Engineer has been solely dedicated for road safety issues.
Besides , LGED has a ‘Central Road Safety Committee’. This committee functions to provide coordination and advisory support to RMRSU for road safety issues. As the road safety issue hasa wider perspective, it requires coordination among Planning Unit, Project Monitoring & Evaluation Unit, Design Unit and all the relevant projects of LGED. The ‘Central Road Safety Committee’ is much useful for that purpose andit conducts regular meetings regarding road safety. RMRSU provides secretariat services to ‘Central Road Safety Committee’.
At regional level, there is also a ‘Regional Road Safety Unit’ of LGED headed by Superintending Engineer (Region). Other members of the unit at the regional level are; Executive Engineer (Training), Assistant Engineer (SE office), Assistant Engineer (Mechanical), Sociologist, Senior Assistant Engineer/Assistant Engineer. The last three members are from the district offices of LGED where the regional office is situated.
District and Upazila level Road Safety Committee
At the district level, the Assistant Engineer of the district office has been made the ‘Focal Person’ to deal with the road safety issues and assist the Executive Engineer to perform the responsibilities assigned by the ‘District Road Safety Committee’. The District Road Safety Committee is headed by the Deputy Commissioner of the district. The other members are Superintendent of Police, Civil Surgeon, Executive Engineer(Roads & Highways Department), Executive Engineer (LGED), Deputy Director(Bangladesh Road Transport Authority) and Owners/Representative from different vehicle owners association.
At the Upazila level, the Upazila Engineer, LGED is the member secretary in the ‘Upazila Road Safety Committee’. This committee is headed by‘Upazila Nirbahi Officer’ of respective Upazila. Officer-in-Charge of Bangladesh Police, Upazila Health and Family planning officer and Owners/Representative from different vehicle owners association are the other members of committee.