A Study on Pedestrian Deaths in Dhaka City Road Accidents

Abstract

Dhaka is the capital city of Bangladesh. It is one of the most populated cities in the world. Living standard in Dhaka city is not very good. It is listed as one of the worst cities to live in1 . But, what about the people who dies in this city who are among the victims of different calamities? Why they had to die in that way? We are specially discussing about the victims of road accidents in this city who lost their lives while being on the road. The pedestrians. According to Banglapedia, 65% people of Dhaka city do not take any vehicle transport to travel. There are 2,230 km of total roads in Dhaka and only 220 km of footpaths available for this 65% of road users. So, when an accident occurs in this city, the pedestrians are the most likely to become the victim here. In our study we found that, from 1998 to 2014, more than 10 thousand accidents occurred in Dhaka and 4,514 pedestrians have died in those accidents. Which means that, each year 265 people lost their lives on average. The frightening result we found that, the pedestrian fatality was 67% where pedestrian involvement in accidents were merely half of the total accidents. The data reveals that 57% of the total accidents happened where the traffic was uncontrolled. Also, 34% of accidents occurred when pedestrians were crossing the roads. This indicates the lack of awareness among people and poor traffic management are to be blamed for most of the accidents. The dangerous locations in the city are the intersections in Kakoli, Shyamoli, Farmgate, Jatrabari etc. But the deadliest intersection is Jasim-Uddin road crossing which is responsible for 24 road accidents where 16 pedestrians died between 2009-2016. But the consolation we can find in that, the rate of accidents and pedestrian deaths holds a decreasing trend over the years. The main goal of the study was to find out the probable reasons behind the death of pedestrians in Dhaka city and sort out a solution to improve the road condition for safety of the people.