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The crash rate in transportation sector of Bangladesh is increasing with growing number of vehicles, watercrafts etc. The country loses 1.2 billion pounds due to road traffic accidents per year which is equivalent to 2% of GDP. As portrayed by traditional approach, the causes of these crashes lie in crash site and with the facility users. However, such generalization precludes the identification of other latent causes lying within the system. Off late, sociotechnical approaches have been applied to analyse the crashes with a view to identifying the societal causes and the causes that lie within the system.
System Theoretic Accident Model and Process (STAMP) is a causality model that analyses the systemic factors of any hazard or crash. It assumes that the crash happens due to lack of enforcement of safety constraints. Causal Analysis using System Theory (CAST) is a structured technique to analyse crash causality from system perspective which is based on STAMP. This study applies CAST to analyse the accidents in the two major modes of Bangladesh i.e., road and inland water transport sector. The aim is to compare the findings of CAST analysis and that of official/traditional investigation with a view to identify the applicability/suitability of CAST analysis in Bangladesh context. At first, basic information (System boundary, loss, hazards, constraints, and proximal events) of the two accidents of the two modes have been collected. Then, a safety control structure has been created where existing components in control of the hazard/accident are depicted. Next, the components of the control structure have been examined individually for their ineffectiveness in preventing the loss. At the end, the safety control structure as a whole has been analysed to detect the flaws in the system before generating the recommendations and improvement program. Subsequently, these recommendations are compared with the official investigations of both the accidents to identify the suitability of CAST method in Bangladesh perspective.
CAST has comprehensively addressed all aspects of official investigations in both road and inland water accidents. For road crashes, CAST has identified 31 components, yielding 111 recommendations; for inland water accidents, it has identified 26 components, resulting in 98 recommendations. Notably, CAST has incorporated the roles of higher tiers, such as national and international committees and government ministries, often overlooked in official investigations. Additionally, CAST has revealedunnoticed components like the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Information, and Fire Service and Civil Defence. Particularly, CAST has uncovered system flaws disregarded by official investigations. The interconnections within CAST's control structure have ensured to prevent losses due to the misbehaviour of individual components. Furthermore, CAST has linked each of the recommendations with the components i.e., it has assigned responsibility to the components concerned. However, CAST analysis demands human expertise and is time consuming. Despite these downsides, CAST is a suitable method to identify the flaws in the system which are generally overlooked in the traditional investigations. |
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