Recurring road accidents

In a horrific incident, some 20 passengers were killed and 14 were left severely injured after a bus slid off a mountain road and fell about 200 feet into a ravine in Sherani district of Balochistan. The bus was en route from Quetta to Rawalpindi. Authorities have declared rainfall and speeding as the main causes but there is much more than this one isolated incident.

Such accidents have become all too frequent, pointing to the fact that shoddy infrastructure, dilapidated vehicles and lack of compliance with traffic rules add to the overall situation. In 2020, WHO published data which showed that road accident deaths in Pakistan amounted to 1.93% of the total death. While this number may be small, it represents innocent lives whose deaths could very well have been avoided if precautionary measures had been taken. It is because of sheer negligence on the part of drivers and authorities that lives continue to be lost in such tragic incidents. Chief Minister Balochistan along with the President and the Prime Minister have expressed their condolences to the bereaved families but their grief and sorrow will not help solve this longstanding issue. Officials must move on from their reactionary approach and instead adopt a precautionary approach. Instead of acting in the aftermath of a situation, prudent measures must be adopted to prevent the situation from occurring or persisting.

The government must look towards developing travel infrastructure in a planned and systematic manner. It is rather obvious that when heavyduty vehicles are forced to travel via narrow dilapidated roads, the risk of accidents increase manifold. Moreover, officials must look to increase patrolling in high-risk areas and impose heavy fines on drivers not abiding by traffic rules.