Eid-ul-Fitr is knocking at the door. People are getting busy with holiday shopping. Shopping malls are already prepared for holiday sales with their goods. Weekly holidays for shopping mall have gone. Now the shopping malls stay open from morning to late night. In order to finish the shopping, people are staying outside till late night. This is contributing greatly in traffic jam. How? Most of the shoppers brings their personal vehicles to the shopping mall. Most of the shopping mall in our country ha very limited parking place. Therefore, people who can’t avail the parking facility, they parks their vehicles in the road side making the road narrow and even blocking the road. A large number of public transports like CNGs, cabs & rickshaws waits in front of shopping malls in order to get passengers. Also number of vehicles running in the streets have increased on this occasion. Result of these is sever traffic jam in the city. Now it takes almost three times more time to reach the destination. However, roads are empty in the early morning. It is the best time to travel long route.
As I wrote earlier section that streets are pretty busy during these days. People who walks in the road are busy too. Most people don’t use foot-over-bridges. People on the street suddenly starts running to cross the road. They are aware of how to cross roads but they don’t obey the rules. And as a result accidents occurs most often.Couple of days earlier, I have seen a terrible accident.
I was walking on the footpath of airport road near Banani. I was stuck at traffic jam in front of Naval headquarter for a while. So I got down from bus and started walking. Few minutes later I was close to Banani circle. Footpaths were occupied by street hawkers. So I had to get down from footpath and walk on the side of road. Suddenly I noticed that there were lots of blood on the street. I was almost walking over the blood. So I stopped and carefully saw my surroundings. Then I saw a small crown just in front of me. I hurried to the crowed and found out that there were a police van and a police is asking a person some questions. I peeped through the van and saw a wrapped dead body lying inside the van. I asked the person standing right to me about what happened. He told me that a road accident took place. A person was trying to cross the road when a bus knocked him down causing his death on the spot. I looked again to the place where accident took palace. I saw some small pieces of dead man’s body still lying on the road. I had some urgent matters to attend to and so I left the place. But for the rest of the day, I kept thinking about the accident.
I believe this kind of accidents could be minimized if people patiently waits for the signal or uses the foot-over-bridge. I request all of you to follow traffic rules while you drive and be careful when you walk on the road. And those who are very busy with Eid shopping and passing most of their time in shopping mall, watch out for your wallets, bags and mobile phones. Crowd in the shopping mall is an ideal place for pick-pockets. Be alert when you shop and when you are on streets.
Good wishes for the upcoming holidays!!!