Road crashes claim 476 lives in September: Report

At least 476 people were killed in road accidents across the country throughout the month of September, according to a report by the Road Safety Foundation.

They were killed in 407 separate accidents that left 794 injured last month.

Road Safety Foundation published the report on Monday (3 October) citing that of the total deceased, 62 were women, 77 were children and 62 were students of different educational institutions in the country.

The average daily death on road was 16.74 in August with 519 people killed and some 961 injured in 458 road accidents. The daily average slightly reduced to 15.86 in September as a result of which the death toll decreased by 5.25%.

"However, the reduction in casualties does not indicate any sustainable improvement," said the report.

Of the total accidents, 134 or 32.92% occurred on national highways, 158 or 38.82% on regional roads, 73 or 17.93% on rural roads, 36 or 8.84% on city roads and six or 1.47% in other places, said the report.

In 182 motorcycle accidents, 169 people were killed, which is 35.50% of the total deaths. Motorcycle accidents comprise 44.71% of all accidents.

According to the report based on data extracted from nine national dailies and seven online news portals and electronic media outlets, there were 29 accidents in Dhaka which saw 23 casualties and 37 injuries.

In the meantime, 78 were killed and three went missing in nine waterways accidents while 19 died and six were injured in 21 train accidents.

The report states that the reasons behind road accidents include reckless speeding, driver incompetence and physical and mental illness; no fixed payment or work hours, low-speed vehicles on highways; reckless motorcycling by young people; lack of awareness about traffic laws, lack of BRTA capacity, poor traffic management; and extortion in the public transport sector.

In July, the highest number of lives (739) were lost this year in road accidents.