Improving Road Safety
in the OIC Member States
93
authority can also undertake construction by applying funds received directly from the
government. Usually, local decision makers are more enthusiastic to construct new roads
than maintaining existing ones. The fact that building new roads creates public support is an
important factor in this process. As a result, existing village roads often deteriorate at a rapid
rate.
 Thirdly, the roads under the LGED jurisdiction, such as upzilla roads (UZR), union road (UNR)
and village road (type A& B) have to deal with local issues and problems during construction.
The land on which LGED roads are constructed come from donations of people living
adjacent to the (proposed) roads. The LGED does not have any land acquisition policy and
they cannot change the alignment of an existing road. The very first stage of a LGED road is
an earthen road only for pedestrians. Due to local demands and mobility requirements, these
roads and tracks evolve and get paved and widened. Since the land comes from the local
people without any compensation, it is very hard to maintain standards and in most of the
cases road safety is compromised. The above-mentioned situation has been observed by the
expert team of ARI, who have visited many routes under control of the LGED. For this reason,
it is very hard to incorporate safety features during construction. For instance, sharp and
non-standard curves are causing accidents regularly, but it is not possible to make it mild
curve or at least widen the outside because of inappropriate land acquisition policy. This also
applies to hazardous locations, such as intersections, narrow bridges, school areas or market
areas.
 Fourthly, it is evident that around 74 percent of all metropolitan area accidents are occurring
in the capital Dhaka, where most of the collisions fall in the category “hit pedestrian”.
Pedestrian fatalities per million population is around 488 and the trend is rising. At the same
time there are no guidelines for road safety in the city area.
 Finally, according to ARI, the budget allocation for road safety is insufficient in Bangladesh.
Road safety audits are to a large extent absent and road safety research funds are very
limited.
An evaluation aimed at measuring the effectiveness of black spot analysis and improvement on
the Dhaka-Aricha highway corridor revealed that the major improvement measures included
the widening of the carriageway along with alignment correction, construction of bus bays,
installation of concrete guard posts, warning gates with speed reducing signs at both entry and
exit points (S. M. Sohel Mahmud et al., 2013). The limited site-specific safety improvement
measures undertaken were very effective in reducing the frequency, as well as the severity of
accidents. However, in a few instances the implemented measures did not produce the desired
level of positive effects because of the presence of intense roadside hawking and non-motorized
transport (NMT) activities, conflicting land use (such as rice drying paddies) and the absence of
enforcement measures.
There seem to be no specific projects aimed at road safety improvement regarding road
infrastructure, although road safety is sometimes included in larger projects. This approach has
resulted in less attention being given to road safety in road design, operation and maintenance.