Daredevilry or an act of panic!

This is nothing less than a scene cut out from a Sci fi thriller. A bus with its entire roof knocked off by the impact of a collision with a covered van and dangling from its rear runs in full speed on the highway for the first few kilometres and then jettisons it midway to cover almost six kilometres. About 60 passengers now could have enjoyed a joy ride if they were briefed earlier and volunteered for such a breathtaking travel like the superrich who do for a spaceflight on Elon Musk's SpaceX. Instead, they started screaming for their lives because the daredevil at the steering wheel had no intention of listening to their appeal for stopping the vehicle that now turned into a tourist bus with open roof. Maybe, the man thought it was the chance of a lifetime to give the passengers an experience they would never forget.

Well, this real-life stranger than fiction drama was enacted on the Dhaka-Mawa Expressway on Thursday night. The bus first hit a covered van in its rear when the roof came off. Common sense dictates that the driver stopped the bus then and there. But he sped up and knocked a private car from behind and then had caused another rear-end collision with another private car before stopping on a side road and fleeing. There is a different version of this story. The roof did not come off from the collision with the covered van but it happened when the driver hit the railing of the expressway at Samostipur under Sreenagar Upazila.

No matter how it happened, the fact is indisputable that the driver did not stop the bus. The latest version of the report says that he panicked when the roof went flying. Accepted that this can happen but why did he continue running the bus at a break-neck speed? The answer is that he wanted to stop at a safe place and run away with his assistant, the conductor of the bus. They did. Mercifully, no passengers died and only eight sustained injuries.

Now average drivers of buses in this country are like this man who wanted his own safety first, not of the passengers. In a country where law has long become a casualty with the mobs taking law into their own hands to deliver summary punishment leaving the victims either instantly dead or fatally injured, a driver's instinct is likely to escape the wrath of the public boiling at the heat of the moment. In this case, the man claims he saw police and army vehicles trailing him behind and he got even more panicked.

This is exactly where he erred. His life was safe if he submitted to the men of uniform. They would have taken him into custody instead of subjecting him to summary trial. The problem with the driver of this Barishal Express bus, like the majority of his kind, was his lack of understanding of the situation. Here the bus might as well be unfit for running on a long route such as the one between Dhaka and Barishal. But the way it hit other vehicles from behind clearly indicates, the man at the wheel was at fault. Other vehicles did not hit his bus, rather it was the other way round in all three collisions involved.

The questionable system of issuance of licences is just a part of the problem. Then the bus companies' mindless duty roster with no or little rest for drivers is largely to blame for accidents, particularly in which buses hit other vehicles either standing on roadside or moving at a low speed. Again, a problem not given much attention to is the lack of a minimum level of education for drivers. The majority of them are almost illiterate who cannot read notice boards or even know the meaning of the various road signs. Together with training for drivers to make them thoroughly familiar with traffic rules and road signs, a mandatory orientation course for them to value life can improve their performance.

nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com