In yet another gruesome road accident, 21 people lost their precious lives when a bus carrying them fell into ditch after collision with another vehicle on the Karakoram Highway in Kohistan district.

Earlier, on Jan 8, as many as 50 passengers died   in separate road accidents in Balochistan’s Bela and KP’s Kohat districts. While the Bela accident toll stood at 41 while the Kohat transport tragedy resulted in deaths of 13 passengers when a boat carrying students of a Madressah drowned in Tanda Dam lake. In June last, As many as 22 people lost their precious lives when a passenger van plunged into a ravine in Balochistan’s Qila Saifullah district. The vehicle was on its way to Zhob from Loralai and it had fallen into the 200-foot-deep ravine which shows how danger our highways are.

In August last year, a passenger bus on way to Karachi from Lahore collided with an oil tanker on the M5 Multan-Sukkur Motorway, resulting in deaths of at least 20 people. 

In the second incident of August last year, as many as eight people lost their lives when a passenger coach met an accident near Rohri in Sindh.

The above-mentioned horrific road casualties in recent month, taking toll on high number of lives, shows the dangers passengers face while opting for road travels.

Though our country has a high rate of road accidents due to rash driving and other safety measures but the damaged roads and highways after the summer floods are becoming a leading cause of accidents in the post floods situation across the country.

According to report of World Health Organisation, an estimated 27,000 Pakistani citizens died on roads in 2018, which is show our country’s dire road safety record.

As a matter of fact, the buses are usually overloaded carrying more than capacity passengers without proper safety measures like no seat belts are worn and speedy and reckless driving factors. Violation of traffic rules is a common factor as our drivers are mostly uneducated people and they do not have any regard for the safety measures and traffic rules. Usually, they can be seen taking U-turn and resorting overtaking of another vehicles in a bid to reach their destinations earlier, but the same result in casualties.

The data compiled by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ shows that an estimated 9,000 accidents took place across the country in 2019-20, resulting in deaths of over 5,000 passengers, and injuring of another over 12,000 people.

According the PBS data, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are leading the list when it comes to highest number of road accidents across the country.

The irony is that there is no decrease in road accidents over the years as the PBS earlier data also shows almost same number of casualties and loss of lives in road accidents prior to 2020.

These grip statistics do not include the number of road accidents in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and GB where the highways and road condition is still very dangerous due to the ravines and ditches alongside roads.

On the other hand, the PBS data has compiled only reported cases and the actual number of accidents must be high as many small scale accidents go unreported.  For example, Karachi traffic police data shows that last year 302 road accidents occurred in Karachi but only 127 of these incidents were registered  with the police stations which shows that quite a good number of road accidents go unnoticed.

In some passengers’ buses of inter-city travels, there is only one driver driving the vehicle for over 16 hours without taking any rest and in of above mentioned accidents, the bus driver is reported to have fallen asleep on the wheel. So this factor also needs to be taken notice of. Those inter-city buses who ply on long journeys of over 12 hours must have two drivers so that they can take rest at intervals to avoid road accidents. Those long route buses who have only one drivers must be penalized with penalties for the sake of safety reasons on long distance routes like Karachi-Lahore or Quetta-Karachi and Peshawar-Karachi etc.

Meanwhile, The Karachi traffic police statistics shows that most  of  roads accidents which killed over 180 people in the mega city Karachi involved motorcycles last year i.e. from January to November 2022.

 As many as 215 road accidents were reported in Karachi, with District West taking the lead, during the last year. Truck, dumpers and tankers collisions are also a leading cause of accidents death in Karachi last year.

According to a data gather by Karachi Traffic police last year, it has identified 32 dangerous spots in the city know for frequent road casualties. Five of them are said to be extremely dangerous spots like New Karachi’s Fazal Elahi Road, sides and link road of Shahrah-e-Faisal Road, ICI Bridge and Mauripur Road’s Dua Hotel.

Published in The Daily National Courier, February, 08 2023

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