Menacing increase in driving on wrong side of capital’s roads

Rampant driving on wrong side of the capital’s roads is causing aggravated traffic congestions.
Even posh cars carrying ministers, MPs, senior bureaucrats as well as police officials are found taking the wrong side of roads.
Expressing extreme annoyance over the issue, road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader said time and again that the VIPs would have to give up the practice of taking the wrong side of the road first.
At least 41,717 cases were filed  over wrong side driving from January to October, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police officials.
Critics of the capital’s lousy traffic management described the number of cases filed over the rampant traffic rules violations as ‘too low.’
A recurring big lapse, they said, was that no VIP was ever sued for taking the wrong side of the road causing public inconvenience.
They said that the police in the capital were never serious in discouraging driving on the wrong side.
They recalled the hasty decommissioning of spiky devices after they flattened the wheels of VIP cars.
DMP joint commissioner traffic Mosleh Uddin Ahmed said that the lone spiky device installed on Hare Road on trial basis in May last year at a cost of Tk six lakh went out of order several months ago.
He said that DMP put off the idea of repairing it or installing more such devices on the capital’s roads.
Junior police sources, however,  said that the new DMP commissioner abandoned the idea of testing the efficacy of spiking the roads as an unrealistic effort.
In recent years driving on the wrong side increased manifold, said a driver who considers the practice as a menacing problem.
Banani resident Mahmudul Haque said in no civilized country VIPs take the wrong side of the road in such flagrant violation of traffic rules to cause aggravated traffic congestions.
The common people have nowhere to turn to seek remedy, he said.
Dhanmondi resident Nasim Akhter said fear grips her every day while crossing roads with her children on their way to or back from school on foot with so many vehicles speeding away on the wrong sides.

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