Night Runs: Inside Dhaka's After-Hours Car Culture (Copy)
When the city empties out, another one starts up. We spent six nights with the crews who own Dhaka's empty flyovers.
Words by Rafid Hasan
Dhaka after midnight is a different country. The traffic that defines the city by day thins to nothing, and what is left is asphalt, sodium light and engines.
We followed four crews across six nights — from Hatirjheel to the Purbachal expressway — to understand what pulls people out of bed at 2am with a set of freshly torqued wheels.
What we found was not lawlessness. It was community: WhatsApp groups with rules, self-appointed marshals, and an unwritten code about where you do and do not open the throttle.
This is the first instalment of a longer Throttle Alpha investigation into how Bangladesh's car culture is organising itself.
