Despite government initiatives to regulate vehicles, unfit and unregistered vehicles continue to dominate the streets of Dhaka, raisning road safety concerns and  the risk of accidents. Officials said authorities have the capacity to act only against registered vehicles that lack fitness clearance. But, thousands of unregistered vehicles, operating without undergoing mandatory fitness tests, remain unchecked, contributing to traffic casualties and chaos. A visit to various routes by a UNB correspondent and conversations with traffic policesde this troubling scenario clear.  Law enforcement officials admitted their helplessness in addressing the issue, as many commercially operated vehicles bypass the required fitness procedures. “Filing cases alone is not solving the problem,” traffic police officers remarked, adding that vehicle owners and operators often exploit loopholes to continue their operations. In a bid to curb the menace, the Police Headquarters issued a directive on April 29, instructing all field-level units not to allow unfit vehicles on the roads. But, the ground reality tells a different story. Government data reveals that as of April 15 this year, some 6.17 lakh vehicles failed to undergo the mandatory fitness tests. DU students protest killing of lawyer by Hindu fanatics, call to ban Abdur Rahim, a regular passenger of a bus named 'Lovely' that operates between the Signboard and Aminbazar areas, said, “The operators don’t care about fitness because they believe it can be managed anyway.” Mohammad Hridoy, a private car driver, explained that while fitness certificates must be renewed annually, owners often delegate the task to third parties due to the perceived hassle. Jamiruddin, a driver, candidly said that they manage to circumvent fitness regulations on the road. A duty sergeant, requesting anonymity, admitted that compromises are sometimes made to ensure the smooth flow of vehicles. “It’s common knowledge how the transport sector operates,” he said. Khondaker Nazmul Hassan, Additional Commissioner of DMP Traffic, emphasised  their commitment to ensuring vehicle fitness. “In the last three months, we have filed 23,000 cases for the absence of fitness certificates. Commercially operated vehicles are more likely to lack fitness compared to private cars,” he said. He added that the authorities are actively controlling the situation through regular checks and impounding unfit vehicles. “We have impounded more vehicles than our capacity, especially those over 20 years old. Some vehicles were returned to their owners after due process, but they must comply with fitness requirements before operating again,” he said. The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) mandates annual fitness checks and certificate renewals for all vehicles. Operating without a valid fitness certificate is a punishable offence that may result in fines and imprisonment. Country's longest railway bridge to open over Jamuna in Sirajganj Stakeholders, however, have raised concerns about BRTA's capacity to address the issue effectively, citing manpower shortages.  Bus operators said that 75 companies run 3,974 buses in Dhaka, while 120 operators oversee more than 5,000 buses nationwide. A private car owner with a vehicle between 1501cc and 2000cc must now pay Tk 50,000 as Advance Income Tax (AIT), up from the previous Tk 30,000, in addition to the costs of obtaining fitness clearance. Dhaka breathes ‘very unhealthy’ air Monday morning The consequences of unfit vehicles are dire, as the rate of road accidents continues to climb. BRTA statistics reveal 4,153 deaths from 4,494 crashes nationwide between January and September this year, compared to 4,016 deaths from 3,727 crashes during the same period last year. The Road Safety Foundation reported 5,598 fatalities in 5,485 crashes, while Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity recorded 4,745 deaths in 4,620 crashes during the same timeframe. With increasing casualties and declining fitness compliance, experts and officials agree that addressing this crisis requires stronger enforcement, greater resources for BRTA and accountability across the transport sector.

Banker Sarwar Hossain is anxious every morning as he becomes very tense five days a week before starting for his office in Motijheel from his home in Uttara. “Sometimes it seems to me that I am just wasting my life. How can I do my job efficiently if I spend hours on streets everyday? Sometimes I spend up to four hours on streets to go to my office and come back,” he said. “Being painfully stuck in traffic is taking its toll on my mental health. It’s really painful.” Read:Gridlock from Uttara to Mohakhali: Dhaka traffic paralyzed It’s not the story of Sarwar only. Commuters in the capital city, Dhaka, are frustrated and angry for the city’s daily traffic chaos, which also costs the economy millions of dollars every year. With 18.10 lakh registered vehicles in Dhaka alone and with a population of over 22 million such a chaos is expected in a megacity where traffic management is still rudimentary and road infrastructure is dilapidated. According to a 2018 study by BUET’s Accident Research Institute, Dhaka traffic wasted 5 million work hours and cost the economy BDT37,000 crore in the year. According to other work done by the government’s BIDS and Dhaka-based thinktank Policy Research Institute (PRI), approximately 6 to 10 percent of the country’s GDP is indirectly lost to traffic chaos every year. Because of ongoing construction of metro-rail, bus rapid transport (BRT) and broken footpaths and dilapidated roads traffic chaos has reached its peak in recent months. Officials involved with such projects or traffic management can’t say when this chaos will end. The worst traffic chaos has been disrupting people’s movement on Tongi-Banani Road via Uttara and Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport areas for months. Many people have missed their flights due to traffic chaos on this route. Sometimes, it takes about two hours to cross the airport area alone, and if someone’s luck is bad, two to three hours won’t be enough to reach Paltan or Motijheel via this way. Mohammed Raihan, another resident of Uttara, goes to the Bangladesh Secretariat from his home to attend his office everyday. “On rare occasions, I can make the journey within 1.5 hours from Uttara to my office. But it depends on the road being free of traffic. Most of the time, I get stuck at the airport area, in Banani and Tejgaon for hours,” said Raihan. Some other routes where traffic jam has reached an unprecedented level are Tejgaon-Farmgate-Shahbagh-Dhanmondi, Gulshan-Banani-Badda-Kuril and Gulistan-Paltan-Motijheel. Md Ferdous, who goes to Paltan from Bashundhara Residential Area for work, said that it takes at least two hours for him to make the journey if he leaves early in the morning. “Even two hours isn’t enough sometimes to travel this distance after 10:00 am. Badda, Mouchak and Paltan intersections-these are the points where getting stuck for indefinite periods has become a common experience,” Ferdous said. Read: As work week ends, rain spells traffic woes for Dhaka dwellers Md Munna, a regular commuter on Mirpur-Motijheel route, echoed Ferdous. Traffic officials have no good news to share on whether it would end soon despite their optimism about taking up some measures to ease the problem. Md Munibur Rahman, Additional Commissioner (Traffic) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), said that following traffic rules and driving vehicles in a disciplined way can lessen the traffic congestion in the city. “Chaotic driving, parking vehicles at undesignated places and taking passengers from the middle of the roads are some of the reasons why traffic congestion happens. Besides, development works at some parts of the city are also adding to the problem,” said Munibur. Munibur added that only traffic police won’t be able to tackle the traffic situation, rather people should fix their mindsets for finding a solution to the crisis. To ease the traffic situation, Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) has decided not to allow parents to use private cars for dropping off their children to schools. “We’ve decided to start school bus service to discourage the use of private vehicles. At first, we’ll start the service experimentally at four schools and we’ll go for the rest if our experiment works,” Atiqul said. The Mayor added that private cars parked beside roads is the main reason for traffic congestion in some areas. “Using private vehicles will decrease if we can earn the trust of the parents. Besides, the kids will develop strong social bonding while going to schools together, which is very important,” Atiqul added. Farid Ahmad, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), said that they’re taking coordinated steps to put an end to the traffic problem. “Both DSCC and DNCC have reached an agreement to bring the buses that ply on Dhaka streets under a single transport company. This will lessen the risky competition between the bus drivers to a great extent. Also, efforts are on to develop the traffic system of the city,” said Farid. But banker Sarwar is not happy with the answers. "These statements will not end our pain anytime soon. All these measures are half-hearted and will not address the problem at all,” he said with frustration.

India has put in place a traffic management system for Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) as the number of drones being used here for multiple purposes is all set to see a massive increase, according to an official statement on Tuesday. This made it mandatory to safely manage the interplay between manned and unmanned aircraft, especially at low-level airspace where drones fly, for which the Union Aviation Ministry has now notified the “national UAS traffic management policy framework," said the statement. This comes after the Central Government recently liberalised the drone regulations and notified a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for drone and drone components. Read: Road traffic management: Experts worry as govt agencies ‘violate rules’ These developments have boosted the morale of the Indian drone industry that now anticipates a mass adoption of drones across sectors like agriculture, mining, infrastructure, geospatial mapping, transportation, emergency response, defence and law enforcement. Director of Drone Federation of India Smit Shah said, “India is ready to witness a scenario where drones will be as prominent as birds in the sky with the adoption of drones picking up at a fast pace. Traditional traffic management services provided by ATCs for manned aircraft cannot be scaled for managing drone traffic which is expected to become at least 100 times higher since the traditional air traffic management is manual and requires human intervention." Read: Manpower crisis: How it’s affecting Cumilla traffic management "This policy framework shall allow third-party service providers to deploy highly automated, algorithm-driven software services for managing drone traffic across the country," added Shah. “The vision to conduct an outcome-based, time-bound UTM experiment as the key next step of the policy framework shall allow India to engage in a public-private partnership for developing safety and separation standards for drones and allow drone operations to scale up quickly in the country,” he added.

It is always difficult to actively manage traffic on any busy road and things become even harder when there is a severe shortage of manpower. This is exactly the problem the traffic police in Cumilla city are facing today.