How bus spotting turned into the fetishisation of reckless driving

Last month, a massive convoy dubbed the "Bus Lovers Tour" was travelling along the Dhaka–Chattogram highway. As the bus sped through Faujdarhat, a young man named Dhrubojit Roy Apon was standing near its open doorway. Without warning, the driver made sudden, violent zig zag swerves. 

The violent jolt threw Apon out of the moving bus, and he was instantly crushed under its wheels. This terrifying highway manoeuvre known locally as "bauli deya" is the latest of the country's "bus lovers'" many absurd obsessions.

What followed was even more disturbing. Instead of stopping to help their fellow passenger, Apon's friends and fellow group members reportedly left his body on the road and fled the scene with the bus. 

The callous hit-and-run drew widespread condemnation. The incident has also raised troubling questions about a toxic subculture in which the pursuit of viral videos and reckless thrills can take precedence over human life.

Across the globe, transport enthusiasts spend their weekends photographing buses, trains, planes, and coaches. In Bangladesh, this specific passion found its home online, blossoming over the years into a massive, highly active community dedicated to bus fandom.

At its inception, Bangladesh's bus lovers community was a harmless network built on nostalgia, travel advice, and a shared appreciation for the massive vehicles connecting the country.

But somewhere along the way, that affection curdled into something else entirely, a culture that rewards recklessness on the road and calls it entertainment.

Humble beginnings of bus spotting 

Back in July 2011, a total of 10 to 12 university students, most of them from Dhaka, set up a Facebook group built around their fondness for a particular bus company. At the time, nobody in the country was doing anything like that.

"When we started this group, Facebook was still a small, growing community, and we were new to this kind of fandom ourselves," said Tarikul Islam Shuvo, admin of what is widely regarded as the original bus lover page, simply named Bus Lover. 

"We had seen a few foreign groups built around buses, but nothing like this existed in Bangladesh. You could say we were the original bus lover group," he added. 

Back then, he said, members posted photographs of buses, old tickets and timetables, along with the sort of nostalgia that long bus journeys tend to leave behind.

That group now has 277,000 members, and Shuvo says its character changed long before it grew this large. What began as fandom slowly turned into something closer to a support network for commuters. 

"Now, in this group, you will find everyone, from bus company owners to ordinary commuters looking for a schedule," he said. As for how many similar groups exist today, he could not give a number. "It is uncountable. New ones are created almost every day. It was not like this originally. Most of them came up during the pandemic."

That growth had a genuinely useful side. Because bus owners, drivers and company staff are active members themselves, passengers who run into trouble on a journey often turn to the group first. 

"If something goes wrong on your journey and you post about it in our group, you will get help," Shuvo assured. Sometimes company representatives reach out to affected passengers before anyone in the group has even asked them to. 

Members have recovered lost phones and laptops through the network, and complaints about harassment or mismanagement tend to move faster once they are posted publicly, since bus owners are conscious of the reputational damage that comes with ignoring a community this size.

The group's influence extends beyond passenger complaints. Shuvo said its members are consulted by bus companies before new models are introduced on Bangladeshi roads, and that the group maintains contact with bus enthusiasts internationally. 

"We know every route and every bus schedule in the country, and we know what will work on our roads and what will not," he said. He has travelled abroad, including to China, on the strength of that expertise. 

"We tell them what will suit our roads, and sometimes we help develop a model that fits. A few of our members have even worked on design and colour schemes for buses. High-end, modern buses barely existed here before. Because we knew what was available elsewhere, we pushed owners to bring in something better."

For views and thrills

When asked how many bus fan groups exist today, Tarikul admits they are uncountable. The digital landscape is cluttered with new pages appearing almost daily, a trend that exploded during the boredom of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

"The growth of these countless new groups is bringing us shame, honestly," he said. "Because most of them are not really bus fan groups any more, they are fan groups for reckless drivers." 

"We have strict regulations regarding these bus lover groups. We do not provide them with our buses because racing, overspeeding and competing is completely illegal. But unfortunately, these groups come with different excuses. For example, some reserve a bus for a school tour, some reserve it in the name of a wedding. The incident that took place last month where our bus was seen, was also taken for wedding purposes."

Suvenker Ghosh Rakesh, managing director, Shyamoli NR Travels

Anyone can open a Facebook page, he pointed out, and in the pursuit of views and monetisation, even schoolchildren have started their own groups and pages. They post footage of dangerous overtaking, tailgating and swerving, and the clips draw thousands of views. 

"It gives them a dopamine rush," he said. "Under the name of touring, they are doing all of this purely for thrills and a view count."

However, the consequences land on the entire community, not just the groups responsible. 

"Whenever something goes wrong, everyone blames us. I understand that, being the original platform, some of that blame falls on us too. But how are we supposed to control this? Anyone sitting in Mirpur or Tongi with a smartphone can open a group like this." 

Tarikul draws a sharp line between the community's early members and the newer ones. 

"Most of us who started these groups were educated. I studied at IBA, a friend of mine went to Dhaka Medical College, and another studied engineering. But a lot of these newer groups are run by schoolchildren or people with no real understanding of the roads, who only care about view counts and have no sense of public safety," he said.

Why Apon's death was inevitable

The disastrous tour on 20 August was the inevitable result of months of escalating online bravado. More than 30 different Facebook groups coordinated the massive trip, planning to leave the Sayedabad terminal in Dhaka as a single, chaotic convoy bound for Cox's Bazar.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, the participating groups like Luxurious Buses and Coaches (LBC), Crazy Bus Lover, BD Bus Spotter, Bus Lover Union were flooded with hype. Members posted old videos of highway racing and shared mocking, arrogant posts about executing the perfect "bauli". They were actively hyping up the prospect of terrifying other motorists.

Following the tragedy, the immediate aftermath sparked a frantic digital cover up across the participating networks. One highly active Facebook faction, long known for boasting daily videos of buses swerving dangerously across highway lanes, quietly began scrubbing their page. They deleted the vast majority of their racing videos to hide their history of promoting reckless driving.

The lead admin of this faction, speaking upon condition of anonymity, offered a sobering and slightly defensive perspective on the tragedy. He belongs to the older generation of transport enthusiasts but acknowledges how the culture has completely spiralled out of control.

"People of my age who grew up in the '90s have a genuine fascination for buses, which is why we opened these groups," he explains. "But nowadays, it is the younger members, the school and college goers, who are doing this racing, the dangerous competitions, and all these risky things."

However, he also admits his own platform's complicity. He acknowledges that his group actively participated in the August convoy and took part in the highway racing. Although he was not physically present on the bus when Apon was killed, he accepts responsibility for the culture his page fostered.

"It is true that we were involved in touring and competing on the highways," he concedes. "It is not that we did not do such things, but we tried to keep that enjoyment within a limit before."

Transport owners are fully aware of the threat. 

Suvenker Ghosh Rakesh, the managing director of prominent operator Shyamoli NR Travels, explains their ongoing battle with these rogue factions.

"We have strict regulations regarding these bus lover groups," Rakesh stated. "We do not provide them with our buses because racing, overspeeding and competing is completely illegal. But  unfortunately, these groups come with different excuses. For example, some reserve a bus for a school tour, some reserve it in the name of a wedding.

"The incident that took place last month where our bus was seen, was also taken for wedding purposes. We were not aware of the tour," he revealed, adding that other major companies face the exact same deception. "I do not know how they do it."

The deception goes far beyond just the initial booking. 

"On mid-journey they switch drivers, and when they switch, some reckless, unprofessional drivers take charge and do these kinds of activities," Rakesh further said.

Rakesh expressed deep frustration with the authorities, noting that these deadly stunts have been happening for years. He claims that even though the highway police are well aware of these incidents, they have treated the issue lightly and failed to take concrete preventive measures.

Responding to this lack of enforcement, Tarik, a staff officer for the Highway Police, defended their efforts while pointing out severe jurisdictional limits. 

"We do monitor speeding. Now it is automatically detected," Tarik explained. However, regarding the evidence of highway racing proudly uploaded to Facebook and YouTube every day, he stated their hands are tied. 

"About the social media posts and other things, we cannot do anything on those unless someone files a General Diary or files complaints. The social media thing is under the cyber unit, we do not have control over that," he added.