Road accidents take over Karachi’s highways

The streets of Karachi have once again started topping the charts for road accident cases, a majority of which have been connected to rampant violations of traffic rules like over-speeding and driving on the wrong side. While the much-needed Road Safety Education Progamme that was launched to combat the city’s long-standing problem of ignorance of road rules is also in the cold storage owing lack of funds available with the Traffic Engineering Bureau. It is believed that lack of action in this regard, along with Karachi’s gravellingly inadequate road infrastructure, has been encouraging the number of collision cases, many of which are seen to be fatal.

In the last two decades, the port city’s road map has seen multiple changes, including an influx of flyovers, underpasses, and U-turns that have made many of the city’s cardinal highways entirely signal-free. The drivers however were never primed for this overhaul in the absence of consistent traffic awareness programmes, leading to increased abuse of the signal-free corridors that have now become the most lawless roads. “For instance, driving on the wrong side is now a common affair on the roads. It wasn’t reprimanded as severely, so naturally, people started seeing it as a means of saving time and fuel, and now it is just normalised over generations. If we stop someone now, they start fighting with the traffic sergeant because they don’t see themselves to be in the wrong,” told a traffic police officer on conditions of anonymity.

Read More: 16 killed in Punjab road accidents

The city’s drivers however believe that the surge in road accidents is majorly linked to the lamentable condition of Karachi’s highways, which are riddled with pits and potholes. Per the traffic officer, this is partly true, but there is also a growing need for increased and stringent policing against traffic violations, in addition to enforcement of consistent awareness programme to educate the masses. “In 1980, the state-run Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) used to run traffic awareness campaigns twice a day in the form of advertisements, but later the show Fifty-Fifty featured a humorous sketch on it after which the programme became a target of ridicule and was eventually abandoned by PTV,” lamented the traffic officer.

According to traffic experts, billions of rupees have been spent on development works in the city during the last 20 years. However, the short-lived road safety education scheme that requires but a few hundred thousand rupees is often the first to be nixed, despite being essential under current circumstances. Per their unanimous suggestions, the scheme needs to be revived on a war footing and requires collaboration between civil society and law enforcement for effective dissemination of the message.

Speaking in this regard, DIG Traffic Ahmed Nawaz was of the opinion that most accidents in Karachi are linked to wrong-way movement, against which a campaign was launched in May and is expected to remain effective without any hiccups like frazzled Road Safety Education Progamme. “We are also trying to make our policing more stringent by issuing challans and arresting habitual and severe violators,” he told.

Confirming the development, a spokesperson of the traffic police told The Express Tribune that between May 12 to May 19, they have issued over 10,126 one-way challans, arrested some 2,075 drivers for violations and seized as many as 3,658 vehicles, while further action is also due.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2022.