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Abstract
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Nowadays motorcycles have become very much popular as one of the main means of transportation and livelihood for many in Bangladesh as a result of hasty urbanization; they are cheaper to purchase, easier to navigate and park, faster to reach destinations, cost-effective, more inexpensive to maintain, and their insurance premiums are more affordable, etc.
Motorcycle ride-sharing services through mobile apps have become trendy in Bangladesh as nightmare traffic often means walking is faster than travelling by car or buses. People of different ages as well as many students are engaging in ride- sharing services. Moreover, a considerable number of independent riders, not involved in any ride-sharing companies, carry passengers.
Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) states that the number of registered motorcycles was below 1.5 million in the country in 2015, increasing to almost 4 million by 2022. According to a World Bank funded research from Accident Research Institute (ARI) in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), apart from the registered motorcycles, at least 1.5 million unregistered motorcycles run on the roads (1)
Motorcycles have high performance capabilities, but low stability. Most importantly, not all of them are designed for highway. So, when motorcycles crash, drivers and/or passengers are more likely to be severely injured or dead due to lack of protection. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), death risks in motorcycle accidents decrease by 40% if helmets are worn properly (2). Almost 88% of the motorcyclists who died in motorcycle accidents were not wearing a helmet at the time of the accidents, and 66% of the motorcyclists did not use helmets on a regular basis, ARI reported (2). Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) is responsible for supervising the quality of helmets, but they did not even have a lab to test helmets till April 2022 (2).
According to ARI, 28.4 persons of every 10,000 motorcycles in Bangladesh are dying in accidents every year. This death rate in motorcycle accidents is the highest in the world (2). Death risks in motorcycle accidents are 26 times higher than that of four-wheelers. More than half of the accidents in the country occur because of high speed.
Language: en |