Safety of pedestrians

Although pedestrian bridges are being constructed, you will always see people crossing roads dodging cars and buses.

Returning home from work one day I saw an old woman and her son trying to cross the busy Nipa road in Karachi despite there being an overhead pedestrian bridge. I wondered how they would go through the long railings put at the island to prevent people from crossing.

When they got to the island, I saw that the son helped his mother climb through a small opening made by people by bending two rods in the opposite direction.

The process took a whole three minutes in which she had given up after getting stuck and almost having her clothes torn. She could not climb down but the hue and cry of others in line made her son almost drag her.

They had to then cross another busy road. The old woman had had enough of exercise for the day and was panting with the effort of pushing herself through. With her son holding her hand and pulling her to make her hurry and her trying to prevent her abaya from flying while holding on to all the shopping bags, she fell on the road.

Fortunately, there weren’t many cars on that side and she was able to get up and run to a corner. For a moment though, I thought a car was going to come and hit her. For those who have not seen that road, there aren’t many lights and the road is almost five lanes wide. Although the pedestrian bridges are being constructed on almost all double roads to provide convenience to walkers, you will always see men and women trying to cross roads dodging cars and buses.

After watching the woman reach the end of the road, I breathed a sigh of relief and cursed at our Pakistani habits of always going around the normal way even if it puts one’s life at risk. The realisation then hit that the woman was too old to climb the 30 or so stairs of a pedestrian bridge. You can still see faded zebra crossings on many roads but hardly anyone knows what they are for and no car ever stops. Heck, the cars don’t even stop at a red light.

It’s good to see at least something is being done for the convenience of pedestrians but at the same time, we can note that whatever small concept we had of cars stopping when people crossed roads is long gone.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2014.