Death on Wheels: How Unfit Vehicles Continue to Kill

A person who leaves home in the morning has no guarantee of returning safely in the evening. This is no longer an exaggeration. Across Bangladesh, the roads that are meant to carry people to their destinations have, for many, become the site of their final journey. And at the heart of this crisis sits one recurring culprit: vehicles without valid fitness certificates. However, the collective response to this recurring pattern remains fleeting �" a few days of outrage, a handful of promises and then business as usual resumes. Lives keep being lost while the root of the problem stays untouched.

The scale of the crisis nationwide is staggering. According to figures from the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), the number of vehicles without valid fitness certificates now exceeds half a million across the country. Roughly a quarter of all registered vehicles are running on fitness certificates that do not meet acceptable technical standards. The picture is even bleaker for public buses: nearly one in every three buses on the road lacks a valid fitness certificate, and more than half are missing the seal on their speed governor �" arguably the single most important safety device for controlling a vehicle’s speed.

The economic toll is just as alarming as the human one. Road accidents are estimated to cost the country more than 1.5 per cent of GDP each year, a figure that runs past Tk25,000 crore annually.

As a trade and transit-heavy country, Bangladesh’s roads carry an especially heavy volume of freight traffic, and this is where the danger multiplies. Trucks with missing doors, non-functional wipers, dead indicator lights or a single working headlamp are a common sight on highways linking ports to the rest of the country. During the monsoon, buses, trucks, covered vans and fuel tankers are routinely driven with wiperless windshields and near-zero visibility �" a recipe for catastrophe that repeats itself every rainy season.

The economic toll is just as alarming as the human one. Road accidents are estimated to cost the country more than 1.5 per cent of GDP each year, a figure that runs past Tk25,000 crore annually. But behind this number lies an immeasurable human cost �" disability, grief, and the economic collapse of families who lose their only earning member.

Why does this crisis persist despite years of warnings? Several structural failures are commonly cited. First, a section of unscrupulous intermediaries reportedly issue fitness certificates for a fee, without any genuine technical inspection, allowing vehicles that should never is on the road to become “fit” on paper. Second, many dilapidated vehicles receive a fresh coat of paint to look presentable on the outside while the underlying mechanical faults remain untouched. Third, a large number of drivers move up from working as helpers, without formal training or a valid licence, adding human error on top of mechanical risk. Fourth, mobile courts and enforcement drives, while conducted regularly, lack the reach and consistency needed to make a dent �" compounded in places by corruption, political influence, and extortion on the roads. Fifth, many owners avoid maintenance costs by concealing a vehicle’s true condition, even as they charge passengers extra fares under the pretext of “maintenance.”

Sudden brake failures and tyre blowouts put passengers, drivers and pedestrians alike at risk, while explosions from expired CNG cylinders remain a recurring cause of fatalities across the country. The environmental toll compounds the human one: black smoke and excessive noise from unfit vehicles worsens already poor urban air quality, contributing to respiratory illness in cities.
Officials at BRTA point to ongoing mobile court operations against unfit vehicles and unlicensed drivers as evidence of enforcement. Transport owners’ associations, for their part, argue that drives alone will not suffice �" real change requires owner awareness paired with sustained oversight from the authorities. Even traffic officials privately concede that despite regular cases and fines, a considerable number of unfit vehicles continue to slip through the cracks.

Experts point to a set of measures that could reverse the trend nationwide. Certification must be tied strictly to genuine technical inspection rather than payment. A digital, centrally monitored database with automated number-plate recognition could make it far easier to flag vehicles with expired fitness status anywhere in the country. Unlicensed driving needs to be met with firm penalties alongside mandatory institutionalised training programmes. Enforcement drives must run consistently through the year rather than in short bursts, and public awareness campaigns should equip passengers to recognise and resist unsafe vehicles rather than simply tolerate them.

Women, children and elderly people, whose physical tolerance is already limited, absorb the worst of this hardship. The deception runs deeper still: fares are raised in the name of maintenance and fitness costs that are rarely actually spent, replaced instead by a cheap coat of paint that fades within days.

Drivers, too, pay a steep price. Many who spend years operating faulty vehicles eventually become accident victims themselves, suffering disability or death, often without any insurance cover or guarantee of compensation. A single accident can therefore push not just a passenger’s family but a driver’s family into lasting hardship.

The fight against unfit vehicles is not an administrative formality; it is a fight for survival. Without the collective vigilance and accountability of BRTA, traffic police, transport owners, drivers and passengers alike, this crisis will not end. With the hope that no mother’s lap is left empty again, and no family loses a loved one on the road, the time has come for the whole country to commit to safe roads free of fitness-less vehicles.