Every day, thousands of pedestrians in overcrowded Dhaka risk their lives darting across chaotic traffic, ignoring overhead footbridges that stand just metres away.
This haunting image from Uttar Badda captures the moment a woman, hand raised in alarm, tries to cross a packed road in front of a moving truck while a footbridge in the background remains unused.
The scene is emblematic of a broader urban crisis.
According to 2023 data from the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety, 123 people lost their lives in road accidents within the DNCC area in that year.
Of those, 61 per cent were pedestrians. Alarmingly, 87 per cent of the fatalities were classified as hit-and-run cases.
Urban planners and safety advocates point to a combination of poor pedestrian infrastructure, weak enforcement, and a prevailing culture of non-compliance as drivers of the crisis.
Many citizens cite overcrowded or inaccessible footbridges as reasons for avoiding them, while vehicles often disregard crosswalks altogether.
Despite multiple campaigns promoting the use of footbridges and safer road-crossing behaviour, the city’s pedestrian death toll continues to climb.
In a city where more than 20 million journeys are made daily, walking remains one of the most dangerous modes of transport.
Without a paradigm shift in urban mobility policy and aggressive public education, Dhaka’s roads may continue to be battlefields for the city’s most vulnerable commuters, those on foot.
