Masood Kamal, Senior News Editor, Banglavision:
Now the Traffic Week has been extended by another three days, meaning that the traffic awareness campaign lasts for 10 days. Initiating the Traffic Week and extending it—both are benefiting for the government. And the Traffic Week was an effective move to stop the student protests demanding road safety. After its inception, the rate of cases filed and fines slapped was so high that many thought that the government exchequer was swelling up with the extra money.
The police imposed around Tk6 crore in fines and the amount is handsome. Is fining the only aim of the Traffic Week. The main goal is to return discipline on the steers, but has that happened yet? The Dhaka roads does not resemble so.
The number of cases is being published in the media, but there is no specific breakdown. Motorbikes and private cars are the major offenders. How many accidents are caused by motorbikes and private cars? Most accidents are occurred because of buses and minibuses.

What will happen if the vehicles responsible for accidents are not held accused? How can resolution to the problem be hoped? Occupying part of roads through illegal parking is major cause of anarchy n the streets. Has that been reduced? The dangerous trend of taking and dropping passengers randomly on the roads is also going on as usual.

The other day, I witnessed a traffic police registering a case. A sergeant was standing being accompanied by two constables. They were randomly checking licences and relevant documents and filing cases, by stopping motorbikes.
Most the cases were filed for invalid licences. It is important to have valid incences, but how does it increase road mishaps? Rather, lawsuits can be lodged for reckless driving, wrong parking and lacking licences. Road accidents and anarchy on the roads are caused due to the reasons. If there are addressed, the roads will be much safer. If not so, they government may increase its income through mindless fining, but the problem will sustain.