In the past 50 years, more people succumbed to death due to road accidents
LAHORE: Reports of road accidents fill our newspapers almost daily. They are on an all-time rise, especially in metropolitan cities. Road accidents may have many different causes, like poor road conditions, but reckless driving is one of the major reasons.
Motorists seem to have no control over themselves and the vehicles they drive. They have no regard for traffic rules and regulations. Speeding, breaking signals, overtaking from the wrong side are very common on our roads. In most of the cases, the driver escapes unpunished due to their social status and our corrupt bureaucracy.
Every year, huge scores of people die in road accidents. It is one of the major reasons of unnatural deaths in Pakistan as the number of fatalities is alarmingly high with an average of 15 deaths every day.
The people who die on the roads in Pakistan majorly include those falling in the age bracket of 15-29. According to a 2014 report by
World Health Organisation (WHO), 30,310 or 2.69 per cent of people in Pakistan die due to road accidents each year. This means that about 20 people out of 100,000 die in road accidents in a year, making Pakistan rank 67th in the world for a higher percentage of road traffic accidents.
In the past 50 years, more people succumbed to death due to road accidents than the war on terror in our country. It is high-time that we develop a movement against reckless driving.
Areesha Muzammil
Published in The Express Tribune, April 24th, 2017.
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