Depleted roads and reckless driving is not the only reasons behind road accidents as pedestrians too are responsible to abide by the traffic rules, says Road Transport Minister Obaidul Quader.
Addressing the parliament on Tuesday, he said, “When I was coming here, I noticed a group of young men all of a sudden started crossing the road amid moving traffic. Who is to blame if anything had happened?”
Quader said that was not the only jaywalking incident he spotted on Tuesday.
“Then I found a girl crossing the road while talking on her phone and a car had to brake to save her. Who would you blame if she was run over?”
Citing road accident killing 17 people an hour in India, Quader said, “Images of how Bangladesh is represented on road fatalities in South Asia is not true.”
Describing the passenger rights body ‘Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity’ as a ‘baseless organisation’, Quader brushed aside its statistics of 339 deaths during Eid travel.
In its latest report on Eid travel, the organization said a total of 277 road accidents took place across the country, leaving 339 people and injuring 1,265 others.
“These are totally untrue. A total of 84 deaths– 42 during Eid and 42 since then have been accounted by police and media reports so far from road accidents.”
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