Unabated Road Accidents

Road accidents across Jammu and Kashmir have become a daily routine now. Reports of loss of lives are common nowadays. The matter of life and death are of course in the hands of God, but this doesn’t exonerate the government of its responsibilities. Recently a report published in newspapers left the common people stunned in which it was stated that around 700 persons lost their lives in 5000 road accidents which depict the high level meetings, road safety awareness programs and challans have not helped in any way to stop loss of lives in road accidents.

In the past ten months alone 677 people died in 5189 road accidents where the number of injured is 7152. In 2021, more than 774 people were killed in different road accidents in J&K. That figures that cropped up should have prompted the authorities to translate those much-debated ideas into productive action. One would expect from the government at least a preventive mechanism if not a new policy to check road accidents.

There is a need to form high level committees that would prepare a comprehensive report on how to fix the accident issue and to study the causes of road accidents. It is high time to focus on the roads that have turned into death traps. The traffic department should also come out of the traditional methods and to play its professional role in declining the number of road accidents that costs human lives unabated.

Over the years, it has become a standard procedure of the administration to forget the matters till death and destruction takes a toll and then rush to the spots for condolences. When accidents do happen and the quiet respite, nothing tangible is put to avoid calamities. From squeezed highways to convoluted roads along the mountainous death traps, the travel is but without the life insurance. Rash driving and licensed amateurs compound the problems. Poor road safety awareness and the missing cops to observe the speed limits – it is not an accident, it is inevitability. What can be more worse – an accident on a highway and the nearest life saving centre beyond the reach and the realization of the injured and the victims that they will not make it, the distress call for help, for life that eventually are lost in ridges and ravines.