Six killed in Lahore accidents since New Year’s day

Three of the deceased include minors; all incidents involve bikes

LAHORE: Road accidents saw no respite in the new year as six people, including three minors, lost their lives since the new year. The latest incident took place on Bedian Road on Thursday.

On Thursday morning, Faraz, 6, and Zain, 7, were on their way to school on a bike with their father. At the three reached Bedian Road, a truck tried to overtake a Qing Qi rickshaw and hit the bike of the family which was travelling on the opposite side of the road.

The victims were rushed to a nearby hospital where the minors were pronounced dead on arrival, while the father was admitted to Lahore General Hospital in a critical condition.

Police teams took the bodies of the brothers to the morgue and collected forensic evidence from the scene of the accident. Police also impounded the truck and took the driver into custody. Police are investigating the matter further.

In a similar incident on Wednesday, a 12-year-old student and her father were killed in Shahdara Town. Mushtaq, 47, was going to drop his daughter Iram to school and both of them were hit by a train at a railway crossing. The victims died on the spot.

In Missri Shah, two students died when their speeding bike lost control and hit a footpath.

Thousands of lives are lost every year and hundreds of thousands are injured in road traffic accidents. On Thursday, Rescue 1122 also released its report of Daily Road Crashes. According to the document, accidents increased 12% in 2017 as compared to 2016.

It stated that Punjab Emergency Service rescued 311,716 victims while responding to 265,510 road traffic crashes in 2017 across Punjab. This number shows an increase of 12 % as compared to the 238,782 crashes of 2016.

Since its inception, Rescue 1122 has responded to 1,721,195 road traffic crashes.

The data revealed that the most accidents were reported in Lahore with 53,979. This was followed by 23,731 incidents in Faisalabad and 15,535 in Gujranwala. The lowest number of accidents, 1773, was observed in Jhelum.

The data also revealed a decrease in accidents in Rawalpindi, Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalnagar, Jhang, Narowal and Vehari districts, whereas there was a rise in the remaining districts of Punjab.

According to the report, out of 311,716 people were injured in accident and 34,697 of the victims suffered head injuries, 6,199 had Spinal Injuries, 17,039 had multiple fractures, 52,450 had single fractures. Staggeringly, minors were the highest casualty figure and made up 201,331, or 65%, of the total number of incidents.

Males were predominantly involved in the accident and amounted to 78% percent of the total victims. As many as 3,829 died at the scene of the accidents.

The analysis of data revealed that speeding was the leading cause of RTAs (45%), followed by careless driving (33%), wrong turns (13%) and others cases 7%. At the same time, 175 cases of one-wheeling was reported.

DG Rescue 1122 Dr. Rizwan Naseer expressed his concerns over the increase in the number of RTCs which resulted in 3,829 deaths and left 110,389 people seriously injured. He said the strict enforcement of traffic laws was the need of the hour, besides urging the general public to abide by safety regulations when driving. He further appealed to parents to stop underage driving and ensure that children wear safety helmet on motorbikes.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 5^th, 2018.