DHAKA, Bangladesh -- As Cyclone Sidr bore down on Bangladesh last week, threatening to sweep away millions of poor farmers and fishermen in the country's southern delta, people in the capital city of Dhaka seemed oddly unconcerned.

Even when the wind picked up and the rain splashed down on their heads, their routines went largely undisturbed. Dhaka's too far inland, they said; cyclones never hit that hard here. It's not like the old days, they said; dams now prevent storm surges from flooding the rivers this far north.

Sidr grew to a mighty Category 4, but the major newspapers still carried only a single story, maybe two, as they tracked its path. They noted that the government was encouraging southerners to evacuate and was moving as many as possible into shelters, but they didn't express much sense of urgency. And it didn't seem as though many questions were being raised about the government's preparations.

In the United States, as Katrina threatened the Gulf Coast in 2005, you couldn't escape a sense of impending doom no matter where you lived, not least because the inadequacy of New Orleans' defenses had been thoroughly documented by engineers and journalists. As it turned out, doom was delivered.

History has documented the vulnerability of Bangladesh's coastal lowlands. The last cyclone as powerful as Sidr, back in 1991, killed 150,000 people and left millions homeless. A cyclone in 1970 killed 500,000.

Even so, as Sidr neared, it became clear that not nearly enough concrete shelters had been built in the south, where most people live in tin shacks or wood huts that are easily blown away. But nobody seemed to be making a stink about it.

The afternoon before Sidr was expected to make land, my friend Shamim drove me north from Dhaka to visit his alma mater, Jahangirnagar University. Nearby is Bangladesh 's independence monument, which commemorates those who fought to win the nation's freedom from Pakistan in 1971 -- at the cost of 3 million lives.

The trip -- 45 minutes each way on the back of Shamim's motorcycle -- was death-defying.

It is a challenge to describe the traffic in Dhaka, a closely packed low-rise metropolis of 12 million. It sits at the center of the most densely populated country on Earth: 150 million people -- half the population of the United States -- living in an area the size of Wisconsin.

All of those millions seems always to be on the roads, trying to kill one another. And often succeeding.

Buses, trucks, cars, motorcycles, motor rickshaws, bicycles, pull carts and pedal carts barrel along at maximum speed through every available slot, braking at the last possible second, swerving and surging and cross-cutting while trying to avoid each other, mammoth potholes and miniature cliffs at the edge of the pavement.

Pedestrians, kids, buskers and beggars wander about and fill in what otherwise would be a few empty spaces.

It is quite an adrenaline rush to zoom through this kind of traffic at up to 60 mph on the back of a motorcycle, with no helmet, slicing between the hard steel of a truck going one way and a bus going the other, with maybe eight inches to spare on each side, a cart full of bamboo looming out of the darkness ahead.

You realize that survival depends on every driver making high-precision decisions at every moment, accurately judging the speed and angle and intentions of everyone else. Then you notice that just about every vehicle is dented, scraped, smeared with paint and otherwise marred by countless misjudgments. At this point, you contemplate the softness of your naked head.

After this particular ride, Shamim's wife scolded him for taking me on such a busy, high-speed road on his bike. And it occurred to me: In those 90 minutes, I probably took a greater risk of getting killed in a road accident than I had in the previous 20 years in the United States, where I wear a seat belt and drive a 5-star-safety-rated car.

As it turned out, Cyclone Sidr did rough up Dhaka, twisting apart some signs, tin roofs and siding. But it didn't do serious damage.

The south was another story. The death toll could rise to 10,000 or so. Many more could die if help, especially clean drinking water, arrives too late.

The government estimates that more than 400,000 houses have been destroyed and more than 600,000 damaged. At least 5 million people have been affected.

Farmers lost their crops just before harvest and fishermen lost their fish just as they prepared to sell their year's catch. In fact, many fishermen died because they refused to leave so many fish behind to seek shelter.

Many Bangladeshis have reached out to help, as have foreigners, including the U.S. government and U.S. organzations, such as CARE. And many Bangladeshis, including the press, are now raising questions about how ill-prepared their government was to handle a cyclone of Sidr's scope.

It's doubtful that any lessons will stick, though.

Bangladesh is ruled by an interim government of technocrats at the moment, so the immediate response may be relatively well organized.

But if the next elected government acts like those that have come before, it will pay scant attention to any long-range plans of its predecessors and will do its own thing -- to the benefit of its supporters, to the detriment of its political adversaries and to the neglect of those with little political power, such as the poor rice farmers and fishermen of the delta.

The last set of elections in Bangladesh fell apart nearly a year ago after accusations of vote-rigging ignited riots. The military-backed president stepped in to put the two major parties on hiatus and named a temporary government to clean up politics and arrange for free and fair elections.

Prosecutions for corruption have been proliferating, and the leaders of both major parties are currently jailed in the parliament. The building itself is an architectural jewel of interlocking geometric forms designed by the American master, Louis Kahn, but right now, abandoned save for its high-profile prisoners, it appears stark, a fitting symbol of a nation suspended.

As for elections, it looks like they won't take place until late next year. Assuming they take place at all.

In the meantime, the poor people of southern Bangladesh will mourn their dead and try to recover what little they had in worldly prospects. The well-to-do and the well-connected in Dhaka will continue their machinations to gain or maintain power. And all Bangladeshis will continue to do their best to swerve out of the way of the next oncoming truck. And the next approaching cyclone.

Bangladesh will remain a high-risk place.