In Pakistan, about 10,000 persons die each year due to traffic accidents.
LAHORE: Around the world, road crashes claim over 1.3 million lives every year. In Pakistan, about 10,000 persons die each year due to traffic accidents. The cost of road accidents in Pakistan in terms of cumulative damages is around one billion dollars a year. A staggering 39 per cent of all traffic accidents in Pakistan cause fatalities, 42 per cent cause serious injury, 11 per cent cause minor injury and in eight per cent of accidents, there is only vehicular damage.
The incidence of traffic accidents can only be reduced if an attempt is made to understand their causes. First, there needs to be properly designed roads and even traffic signs. If either of these is not up to standard, it could be cause for a traffic accident. Of course, the primary reason for traffic accidents is fast and rash driving but that can be checked by vigilant policing. In addition to that, vehicles need to meet the necessary international fitness and road safety standards.
Thought also needs to be given to protecting the infrastructure that one finds along roads, since it can be prone to accidents. In this context, in Pakistan, encroachments and illegal structures along roads must be removed without delay.
Drivers should be punished on a system based on points where beyond a certain number of violations, they lose their licence to drive for a fixed period of time. As for the traffic police, they need to be trained better and should be efficient at not only managing the flow of traffic but also in fining those who break traffic laws.
There is also a dire need for a system where there is prompt reporting of traffic accidents so that emergency services can reach in as short a time as possible. An audit of road safety measures would also help because it will plug weaknesses in the system.
Umar Farooq
Published in The Express Tribune, November 29th, 2012.
