Road accident deaths: Causes graver than concerns

Though daily police reports about road accidents present a horrible scenario as otherwise also almost every week see newspaper headlines screaming about casualties being inflicted by road accidents across but the government says nothing beyond the token relief for the road accident victims. While the traffic authorities blame rash and negligent driving for most of the road accident deaths, the two obvious reasons for the tragic deaths in road accidents are bad roads and lack of proper traffic regulation measures. Years ago the Kashmir’s Traffic Department had planned to introduce traffic interceptor vans to be equipped with cameras and radar, but the proposal did not receive the attention it deserved from the government. More shocking is the fact that the fatality of roads has been ignored and it has become precedence in Kashmir that only a huge incident involving the death of dozens attracts attention of the government. The response to road accident deaths remains confined to statements and condolence messages of the top public functionaries as days after mourning deaths caused by the fatal road accidents everything settles in and the vehicles go on killing people as usual. Silence of both the government and the civil society groups on the causes of frequent road accidents deaths is highly condemnable and unless and until the government does not think about the causes of the road accident deaths with the purposes of looking for some remedial measures, the killer roads will continue to take their toll.
Since the first cause is the bad condition of roads as there is hardly any road perfectly fit and safe for driving particularly after the last years flash floods the R&B department has an administrative obligation to speed up the repair and macadamisation works both in Srinagar city and as wells major towns of Kashmir valley. As it is also a fact that most of our roads are located in remote mountain areas, one would not mind the rough driving surface with potholes, but the there can be no compromise on safety at steep turns over deep ravines. The next culprits are the vehicles used for public transportation. Most of these have outlived their utility and there is absolutely no physical check on the fitness of these vehicles. The outdated vehicles are not only a severe threat to the lives of passenger travelling in passenger vehicles but also the greatest source of pollution. By all standards of administrative understandabilities the government is entirely responsible for the increasing frequency of road accidents.