Traffic tragedies

The notice taken by the Sindh High Court’s Sukkur Bench of the collision between a passenger bus and a truck near Khairpur, which claimed 59 lives on November 11, is a step in the right direction. The court has asked the chairman of the National Highway Authority, as well as senior Motorway Police officials and others holding important positions, to submit a report regarding repair and construction work on the M-5 Highway from Ubauro to Hyderabad. In his constitutional petition, the advocate who moved the court has said that long delays in this work, the poor condition of the road, the misuse of funds and the failure to offer alternative routes led to the accident and the consequent tragic loss of lives.

Unfortunately, road accidents occur with regularity in Pakistan, but it seems that it is only now that some positive steps have been taken to deal with this state of affairs. According to the Rescue 1122 Service, some 12,000 lives are lost each year across the country to road accidents. Many of these take place because of the poor training of drivers — even those who drive public transport vehicles — and our failure to regulate road traffic services or to inculcate a sense of responsibility among people using roads. In this particular incident, the Motorway Police has revealed that the bus was heavily overloaded. Such overloading is, of course, common and may have contributed to the high number of deaths.

But the fact also is that we need to review motorway safety and the transport of people at a wider level. In this case, it appears the poor condition of the highway also contributed to the mishap. While we cannot be sure to what extent careless driving was a factor here, it certainly has been in other similar accidents, with over-speeding, the poor state of vehicles and violation of traffic rules all being reasons behind such mishaps. We must hope that action will be taken to reduce the number of people who perish in this way every year.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2014.

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