Dr Md Shamsul Hoque, professor of civil engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), talks to Monorom Polok of The Daily Star about the role of systemic failures and corruption behind the alarming rate of traffic fatalities in Bangladesh, and the critical structural reforms required to curb it.

For some, the battery-run vehicles are a time-efficient and cost-effective blessing; for others, they are a dangerous disruption to the already precarious traffic system.

Instead of introducing more buses, the government is moving to allow 5,000 more CNG-run auto-rickshaws on Dhaka streets, which has the potential to worsen the perennial congestion.

A college girl died after her scarf got entangled with the motor of an auto-rickshaw she was riding on in Shanir Akhra area yesterday.

All she felt was a sudden jerk and then her limbs went numb. Twenty-year-old Sumaiya Sweetie was paralysed for life from the neck down.