Road tragedies

Terrorism dominates headlines but graveyards are being filled by victims of another losing war — of safety on roads.

A casual observer may imagine that one of the largest unnatural losses of life every year in Pakistan would be caused by terrorism — and they would be wrong. The number of deaths attributable to road traffic accidents is almost three times that attributed to terrorism. On the evening of April 17 tragedy struck again when an out of control bus mowed down 15 people waiting at a bus stand in Notak Ada, Dera Ghazi Khan. The bus which was Karachi bound was carrying 50 passengers and apparently suffered brake failure. Enraged passengers at the bus station caught the driver and beat him and burned his allegedly defective bus. In addition to those that died, another 10 were seriously injured.

These figures now join the appalling catalogue of deaths directly caused by road accidents — and the causes of the accidents range from asleep at the wheel to poor maintenance to overloading and overspeeding and every other conceivable cause in between — including the dilapidated state of the road infrastructure. There is no ‘road safety’ culture taught in schools and those regulations that are in force are indifferently applied. The Global Status Report on Road Safety 2013 published by the World Health Organisation declares that a leading cause of death for young people aged 15-29 is road accidents. There were at least 5,192 deaths in 2010, an underestimate according to the National Highway and Motorway Police and Rescue 1122 that both put the toll at around 12,000 a year. In the same year the South Asia Terrorism Portal said that 7,435 were killed as a result of militancy, and 50,987 since 2003 from the same cause.

The years 2003-13 saw 130,000 fatalities on the roads. Ninety percent of drivers are responsible for the crashes they are involved in. Post-crash care is poor and there is a dearth of appropriately trained nursing staff for mass-casualty incidents. Road accidents are a major public health problem. Terrorism dominates the headlines but the graveyards are being filled by the victims of another war we are losing — that of safety on the roads.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2014.

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