Coach carnage

Mass-casualty road traffic accidents (RTA) are so common on the roads of Pakistan that they rarely make the headlines, but occasionally they are of such magnitude and horror that they briefly grab the national attention. The average motorist will witness any number of ‘close calls’ every day, and the toll exacted by overloaded and unbalanced trucks carrying agricultural produce goes largely unreported. Where the roads are controlled and regulated by the traffic police — the motorways being an obvious example — large-scale accidents involving multiple fatalities are relatively rare. Where the roads are less well maintained or policed, it is a very different story.

The collision of two passenger coaches and two trucks on the road between Quetta and Karachi has killed at least 38, injured 15 critically and the casualties are likely to rise as one of the buses was enveloped in a fireball; not all the victims have yet been identified or even discovered, such was the ferocity of the blaze. The accident was magnified because the bus travelling from Karachi to Turbat was carrying — illegally — a consignment of Iranian diesel fuel. The illegal trade in petroleum products is widespread and it was inevitable that an accident such as this was going to happen. All the vehicles involved were completely destroyed and it is believed that nobody on the Turbat-Karachi bus survived. The cause of the accident is believed to have been an unwise overtaking manoeuver by the Turbat-Karachi bus, which is alleged to be driven by the conductor as the driver was asleep. Routine condolences have been issued, as has a routine commitment to investigate the accident according to the chief minister of Balochistan. Neither condolences nor an investigation is likely to do anything to mitigate the instances of accidents such as this. Carrying passengers in the same vehicle as highly combustible petrochemicals is an obvious folly. It would have been assumed that any inspection of the vehicle at one of the many checkpoints along the road would have revealed the illegal load. But apparently not so and nearly 40 are now dead, and poor policing is as much to blame as bad driving for this tragedy.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 23^rd, 2014.

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