National Road Safety Day Today: 60,000 Drivers to Be Trained, Road Safety Act 2026 on the Way

National Road Safety Day is being observed across the country today, Thursday. The day is being marked with the aim of reducing road accidents, ensuring safe travel for people and raising awareness among road users.

This year's theme is 'Safe Roads, Prosperous Country — Bangladesh Before All'. With this theme in the foreground, emphasis has been placed on taking coordinated initiatives to establish safe roads.

This year's observance carries a resolve to turn road safety into a social movement. To that end, importance is being given to involving government and private organisations, transport owners' and workers' associations, drivers, pedestrians and the general public.

Those concerned say road safety is one of the most important conditions for protecting people's lives and property, ensuring unhindered travel and building a sustainable transport system.

On the occasion, the Road Transport and Highways Division has taken several initiatives. These include health and eye tests and drug tests for professional drivers, involving teachers, students and young people in road safety activities, repairing road signs, signals and markings, and awarding professional drivers on the basis of skill.

Alongside this, publicity campaigns and a marathon are also being organised to raise public awareness about road safety.

To ensure road safety, emphasis is being placed on five key pillars under the World Health Organization's 'Safe System Approach' — safe roads, safe vehicles, safe speed, safe road users and post-crash management. Coordinated steps in these areas can bring down accidents and deaths, according to those involved.

Various government agencies are working together to strengthen road safety in Bangladesh. The Roads and Highways Department has taken initiatives to improve safety on risky stretches of national highways. According to the roads division, there is a plan to implement safety improvement work experimentally on 140 kilometres of national highway and to install various safety measures on around 600 kilometres of highway.

To raise the skills of professional motor vehicle drivers, an initiative has been taken to train 60,000 drivers through the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA). Increasing drivers' skill and responsibility, ensuring they obey traffic laws and reducing the tendency to drive recklessly are among the main goals of the training.

Ensuring quick emergency medical care after a crash is also an important part of road safety. To that end, 40 basic life support ambulances and 40 motorcycle ambulances have been supplied to the health sector, so that the injured can be taken quickly from the crash scene to hospital and given primary emergency treatment.

There are also initiatives to use integrated traffic management and accident detection technology to prevent accidents on highways and monitor vehicle movement.

Importance is also being given to building a legal and institutional framework. Work is under way to formulate a 'Road Safety Act, 2026', and there is a plan to form a national road safety authority. The proposed framework aims to strengthen coordination among ministries, divisions and agencies, provide policy direction and oversee activities.

Initiatives have also been taken to prepare a standard helmet enforcement guideline to reduce motorcycle accidents and deaths, and a speed management manual to effectively control vehicle speed limits.

Experts, however, say infrastructure development or new laws alone are not enough. Drivers' reckless speed, disregard for traffic laws, lack of skill, vehicle defects, risky overtaking and pedestrians' lack of awareness all raise the risk of accidents. Design flaws in roads, a lack of adequate signs and signals, encroachment on footpaths and weak road management also obstruct safe movement.

Experts say road safety cannot be confined to the formal programme of a single day. Awareness activities must run all year round, the causes of accidents analysed, risky roads identified and the results of measures taken evaluated. Quick treatment for the injured and support for affected families must also be ensured, they add.

Ensuring road safety is the responsibility not only of the government but of transport owners and workers, drivers, passengers and pedestrians alike. Those involved have also stressed behavioural change — drivers obeying traffic laws and passengers refraining from boarding or alighting from moving vehicles.