Challenge of road safety
Four people were killed and three injured when an SUV carrying them skidded off the road and rolled down into a deep gorge near Maligam in Ramban district on Monday. The SUV driver Sajjad Ahmad and three passengers — Abdul Wahid Bali, Aanayatullah, Mohammad Ayoub Bali lost their lives in the incident. Three more were injured. During the night intervening Monday and Tuesday, two more persons died in the same district when the vehicle they were traveling in skidded off the road and fell into a gorge near BatteyChashma on Srinagar Jammu Highway.
Such kind of reports are published in newspapers almost on daily basis. There is hardly any day when someone doesn’t die or get hurt in some traffic accident. The roads in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly in Chenab Valley have become death traps. Every day we talk about deaths and injuries in road accidents and every day we discuss loopholes that characterize the traffic management in Jammu and Kashmir. Be it faulty road engineering and pathetic condition of roads, or for that matter the reckless and mad driving by people on the wheels, or the lax attitude of corruption-ridden Transport and Traffic authorities — everything has conspired to make J&K a terrible place in terms of road accidents. Indeed if the frequency of traffic accidents, which is shooting up with each passing day much to the shock and awe of the people is any indicator, then it goes without saying that driving on the roads and streets here has become a massive security hazard.
Road accidents, it goes without saying, are taking a great toll on human lives now than it was ever before. Some years back stray incidents of road accidents would occur here and there in the state but now it is three to five accidents a day with the number of deaths and the wounded people at times exceeding the number of accidents which have turned the roads into virtual death traps. There are about seven hundred thousand vehicles in the state which make it absolutely high number if other factors are also taken into consideration. In the last 20 years, the number of vehicles has increased more than ten-fold while as the space available in terms or roads as well as the road conditions have not improved to the expected level. The reckless driving is the main reason behind such mishaps. Transport authorities are issuing driving licenses, permits and fitness certificates without taking the requisite qualifications into consideration. The indiscriminate issuance of driving licenses to those who do not undergo proper trainings and subsequent tests for securing the licenses as per the rules makes the mess more striking.
While as the UT administration has been generous in providing respectable ex gratia relief to the next of kin of the victims and also to the injured ones, need is to have a holistic road safety plan. The traffic police and transport authorities can play a great role to ensure that all the traffic norms and rules are followed in letter and spirit.
