After the Jatri Kalyan Samity and the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority produced wildly divergent figures for the number of deaths in the country from road accidents in 2023, a third organisation, the Road Safety Foundation's annual report on the same topic assumed greater importance.
According to BRTA, as many as 5,024 people died in 5,495 road accidents across the country in 2023 while Jatri Kalyan Samity, a platform advocating passenger welfare, in a recently released report put the death toll at 7,902 from 6,261 road crashes - a difference of almost 3000.
Now RSF, another civil society platform advocating safe roads, have come out with their report, which says 6,524 people, including 974 women and 1128 children, were killed and 11,407 others injured in 6911 road accidents in 2023.
The death toll put out by RSF is almost exactly halfway between the BRTA and JKS numbers, and thus can only further confuse the public on how many people actually died in accidents.
Prof A I Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, chairman of the Road Safety Foundation, formally disclosed his oreganisation's report at a press conference at its Dhanmondi office on Saturday.
The RSF prepared the data based on reports published by nine national dailies, seven online news portals and electronic media and also on its own sources. JKS used largely the same methods.
BRTA's data was collected from 64 districts after cross-checking with other stakeholders such as police, district administration, hospitals and mass media.
In any case, the sheer distribution between the three numbers can only lead to more questions on how these numbers are being collected and their veracity.
RSF's casualties by vehicle type
According to the vehicle-wise statistics of fatalities in accidents, motorcyclists and riders are 2,487, which is 38.12% of total deaths , bus passengers are 274 , which is 4.19%, truck-pickup-covered van-tractor-trolley-lorry riders are 384 (5.88%), private car-microbus-ambulance-jeep passengers 229 (3.51%), three-wheeler passengers (easybike-CNG-autorickshaw-autovan-mixer-tempu-laguna) 1209 (18.53%), locally manufactured Passengers vehicles (Nasiman-Kariman-Bhatvati-Alamsadhu-Pakhivan-Chander Car-Mahindra-Tomtom) killed 296 (4.53%) and Bicycle-Pedal Rickshaw-Rickshaw van riders 193 (2.95%).