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More than 7,000 students have lost their lives in road accidents across Bangladesh over the past seven and a half years, with more than half of the victims being college and university students and motorcycle crashes emerging as the leading cause of death, according to the Road Safety Foundation (RSF).
In a press release issued on Tuesday, the organisation cited its analysis of road accidents recorded between 2019 and June 2026.
The report said 7,364 students were killed in road crashes during the period, accounting for 15.11 per cent of the 48,713 road fatalities recorded nationwide.
Among the victims, 3,328 were school and madrasa students aged between 5 and 17, while 4,036 were college and university students aged 18 to 25.
Motorcycle crashes claimed the lives of 3,841 students, representing 52.15 per cent of all student fatalities. Another 1,923 students were killed as pedestrians after being hit by vehicles.
The report also found that 927 students died while travelling as passengers, 519 were killed while riding bicycles or rickshaws, and 154 died after scarves or clothing became entangled in the wheels of autorickshaws.
According to the RSF, 2,149 student fatalities occurred on regional roads, 1,947 on rural roads, 1,786 on urban roads and 1,482 on highways.
Children aged 5 to 12 were most often killed while travelling to or from school or playing near their homes, particularly on rural roads, after being struck by autorickshaws, motorcycles or goods vehicles.
Meanwhile, students aged 13 to 25 were more likely to die as motorcycle riders or passengers, with such crashes occurring mainly on regional roads and highways.
Yearly figures show that 693 students were killed in 2019, 719 in 2020, 936 in 2021, 1,385 in 2022, 1,153 in 2023, 1,073 in 2024, 1,014 in 2025, and 391 during the first six months of 2026.
The foundation attributed the deaths to poor road infrastructure, unsafe vehicles, lack of road safety awareness, inadequate road safety education in schools, reckless motorcycle riding, violations of traffic laws and weak discipline in the road transport sector.
It recommended regular road safety campaigns in educational institutions, teacher training, inclusion of road safety in the national curriculum, removal of unsafe vehicles from roads, stronger safety measures around schools and colleges, and stricter enforcement of laws to prevent underage motorcycle riding.
The organisation noted that despite nationwide protests demanding safer roads following the deaths of two students in a bus crash on Airport Road in Dhaka in 2018, effective discipline has yet to be established in the country’s road transport sector.
