Again and again

Reality is that Pakistan is losing more to the carnage on the roads every day than it is in its war against terrorism

At least 62 people may have died in the fire resulting from a crash between an oil tanker and a bus on the Kathore link road between Superhighway and the National Highway near Karachi on January 11, with there being possibility of the death toll rising further. There is uncertainty about the final body count as some bodies were ‘clustered’ and fused into a single mass such was the ferocity of the fire. On the same day, at least 10 people died in another crash in Lasbela district of Balochistan and at least four in Sukkur. There may have been countless other fatal accidents on that day as well that never made the headlines. The reality is that Pakistan is losing more to the carnage on the roads every day than it is in its war against extremism and terrorism, and unless there is a dramatic — and unlikely — change in national attitudes to road safety, that carnage is set to continue indefinitely.

This latest horror is alleged to have happened after the bus and the tanker collided head on some time after midnight, with the tanker reportedly on the wrong side of the road at the time. Road users, be they drivers or otherwise, will have seen vehicles on the wrong side of the road every day of their lives; it is commonplace and causes accidents daily, fortunately not all of them as disastrous as that in Karachi. As has been noted before in these columns, Pakistan has no culture of safety outside some parts of industry and local franchises of multinational operations. That absence adds up to a yet-to-be counted drain not only on the population numerically, but in terms of resources, human and otherwise.

There was recently a much-trumpeted plan to teach road safety in Punjab schools but even if implemented, it will be years before there is an attitudinal change in driving behaviour. Quite apart from fatalities, there are hundreds of thousands injured on the roads every year, their lives blighted and productive lives possibly ended. The fight against extremism may one day be won; the war on the roads has a far more uncertain outcome.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 13^th, 2015.

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