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Beyond deaths, road crashes destroy livelihoods
World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims today
About a week ago, Omar Faruk, 40, dragged himself aboard a Golden City Paribahan bus at Madhya Badda in the capital. He lost both legs in a road crash in Dhaka several years ago and now begs to support his family, who live nearby.
Another youth, Md Sajib, 20, is fighting a battle that statistics rarely capture. Two years after a crash that killed both his friends, he is permanently disabled, and his family says it can no longer afford his treatment.
Their stories are far from unusual. Every day, road crashes kill and disable people across Bangladesh, leaving survivors and their families struggling with lasting physical, emotional and financial hardships. These human costs will come into focus on Sunday as the country joins the rest of the world in observing the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
Families’ savings gone
Sajib lives in Chuadanga Sadar upazila. According to his family, the Badarganj Degree College student rode a motorbike to a concert in Kushtia with two friends, two days after Eid-ul-Fitr.
On the journey home that night, the bike went out of control at Parlakshmipur Kurir Math on the Sarojganj-Khaskara road and hit a roadside tree. Both friends died at the scene. Sajib survived with grievous injuries but was left permanently disabled after a long fight for his life.
His mother, Monuara Begum, said the family spent nearly two months at Ibn Sina Hospital in Dhaka after the crash.
“The doctors couldn’t give us any hope then. We are very poor people. With the help of others and by the grace of Allah, we somehow brought our son home,” she said, in tears.
She said the family has spent more than Tk30 lakh on his treatment in two years and the family has sold all its land. They can no longer afford medicine, let alone better care.
A 2023-24 survey by the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB), carried out for the Non-Communicable Disease Control programme of the Directorate General of Health Services, found that more than 30 lakh people are injured in road accidents each year.
About 38,000 of them become permanently disabled an average of 104 people a day. Road accidents also kill an average of 66 people a day.
The National Health and Injury Survey analysed data from 442,998 people in 64 districts between May 2023 and mid-February 2024. It found road accidents to be the leading cause of injury deaths in the country and the third-biggest cause of non-fatal injuries.
Deaths at record levels
According to the Road Safety Foundation (RSF), 4,647 people were killed in 5,093 road accidents in the first ten months of 2026 (January to October). More than 45,000 people have died on the country’s roads in nearly seven years, from 2020 to October 2026.
In 2025, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) recorded 5,490 deaths, the highest figure on record. Non-governmental organisations say the true figure is higher.
Large shares of the victims are young and of working age, and motorcyclists and pedestrians are among the worst affected.
Under the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2021-2030), countries have pledged to halve road deaths and injuries by 2030.
The BRTA is providing financial assistance to the families of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents. Anyone affected by an accident, including drivers, or their families, can receive support from the BRTA’s Board of Trustees.
According to BRTA sources, the assistance ranges from a minimum of Tk1 lakh to a maximum of Tk5 lakh.