A Study on Road Traffic Accident Scenario of Bangladesh

Civil Engineering

Traffic accidents have been increasing rapidly in Bangladesh during last two decades causing a huge number of social and economic costs in terms of accidents, death, injury and property damages. In 1990, road accident as a cause of death and injuries were by no means insignificant lying in ninth place out of a total of over 100 separately identified cases (WHO) in low and middle-income countries like Bangladesh where highly dense population, with vehicle and urbanization growth. Accident rates and fatality based on the elements directly involved in an accident event are generally expressed as per unit registered motor vehicles, per unit population, per kilometer of roadway length and per unit vehicle kilometer travelled. Although accident and fatality rates based on vehicle kilometers travel but due to data limitation and other constraints accident or fatalities per unit registered motor vehicles are more commonly used worldwide as a tool of global comparison in different countries (4th Annual paper met and 1st Civil Engineering congress, December, 22-24, 2011, Dhaka, Bangladesh). The road accidents statistics and characteristics revealed that Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates, about 70 percent of road accident fatalities occurred in rural areas including rural sections of national highways. Almost 89 percent of fatalities are vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, bicyclist and motorcyclist. Pedestrian-vehicle conflicts are clearly the greatest problem with significant involvement of trucks and buses. This study interested to forecast the magnitude of road traffic accidents for the future so that decision makers can make appropriate decision for precaution. This study also provides an assessment of road traffic accidents in Bangladesh and its impacts based on data collected for the period of 1971 to 2017. This study has also tried to pick up the scenarios of road accidents to observe the tremendous situation. The study observed that the general trends of road traffic accident (RTA), deaths and injuries reveal that the number of RTA, deaths and injuries increased gradually. Although the number of RTA and deaths observed decreasing trend in recent years, the ratio of number of deaths to number of accident increased significantly.

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