Dhaka: A staggering recent figure shows that about 8,642 people died in road accidents last year and the most of the victims of these accidents were the sole wage earners of their families.

An estimated 581 road accidents took place in 2015 leaving 21,855 persons injured, according to a report published by Bangladesh Jatri Kollyan Samity [passengers’ welfare association] (BJKS).

It was said that about 1,305 persons were permanently paralysed in different kinds of accidents that occurred on country’s roads last year.

The Bangladesh Jatri Kollyan Samity, which first started keeping such records in 2014, released their annual figures for 2015 at a press conference at the National Press Club in the city on Saturday, coincidentally the day on which 8 persons perished in separate road accidents near Bangabandhu Bridge in Tangail.

The report identified 14 major causes of such road crashes recommending 10 possible solutions against them.

Road Accident Monitoring Cell of the organization compiled the data from published reports of 10 national dailies and six local dailies, as well as monitoring tv news reports - their second such annual compilation.

Although the number of fatalities is slightly higher than the same organization’s corresponding figure from 2014 (8,581), while the total number of accident victims, both dead and injured, represented a substantial increase of nearly 17 percent over the 2014 number for total victims (26, 112).

The total number of accidents recorded in 2015 is also well above the 2014 mark, when it was below 6,000. The year-on-year increase, as indicated by the BJKS records, is over 11 percent.

BJKS secretary general Mojammel Haque Chowdhury said some 30,497 people, including drivers and transport workers, were recorded as victims in various types of road accidents over the course of the year.

Of the total, 8642 suffered death due to injuries sustained in the accidents, while of the remaining 21,855, some 1305 people lost the use of a hand, leg or other body- part permanently, the BJKS have reported for 2015.

A majority of the accidents, 56 percent, were recorded on national and regional highways, vastly outnumbering both the 23 percent on city streets, and the 21 percent recorded in villages or ‘other roads’.

A key finding of the report is that amongst all the recorded pedestrian deaths due to accidents in 2015, a very high 60 percent occurred in and around markets and kitchen markets of both cities and villages that could be linked to the absence of bus bays in those areas, and where footpaths had been illegally ‘grabbed’.

There is also a breakdown of the types of accidents to have occurred, where ‘head-on collisions’ between vehicles dwarfs the others with 57 percent of all accidents being recorded as such by the BJKS.

The sight of vehicles having skidded off highways and fallen into some roadside ditch is of course not uncommon in Bangladesh, and we learn from the BJKS report that 13 percent of all accidents recorded in 2015 presented such views; the same (13 percent) that resulted out of drivers losing control over the steering, while the remaining 17 percent were attributed to ‘other reasons’ by the BJKS.

Their Road Accident Monitoring Cell have pointed to footpath grabbing, (presumably reckless) overtaking, exceeding speed limits and overloaded vehicles as major reasons that were the most common in the road accidents.

Among others, joint secretary of Nirapad Sarak Chai Andolan Lion Gani Miah Babul was also present at the press conference.