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Kashmir’s
roads are becoming highways to hell. The staggeringly high traffic
fatality rate attests to this in a starker manner.
In 2004 alone 328
people were killed and another 3923 were injured in traffic accidents on
the Valley’s roads. The statistics for the preceding years too mirror
a high accident rate. Between 2000 and 2005 1365 people died and another
14131 were injured on our roads.
In the Valley where members of the expanding middle class are taking to
the roads in record numbers, crash rates are growing out of control.
There are a host of other factors that heighten the peril. With car and
motorcycle sales rising, the government is unable to build wider and
safer roads. In a place like Kashmir where the existing road systems are
badly maintained and lack basic infrastructure such as stop signs and
traffic signals the rise in road accidents is becoming difficult to
bring down.
With existing roads already hopelessly congested road fatalities are
likely to go up in the years ahead. Besides, in Kashmir the causes of
accidents are varied: Traffic in the Valley especially in the capital
city is frequently a tumultuous and deadly mix of pedestrian, affordable
motorcycles, cars, bicycles and passenger vehicles- all vying for places
in line along the same overburdened stretches of blacktop.
To this add lax law enforcement, a flood of inexperienced drivers, and a
marked indifference to safety on the part of many motorists and it’s
little wonder that our roads sometimes resemble the traffic chaos of the
metropolitan cities. The offensive behaviour now universal among
Kashmir’s aggressive me-first motorists too is likely to take the
accident rate up.
Motorcycles are wildly popular in Kashmir because almost anyone can
afford one. But the tendency among Valley’s youth to ape their reel
favourites especially the Dhoom flick’s motorist gang is likely to
inflict a toll. Motorists are usually seen disobeying the rules and
often avoid taking safety precautions. Though helmets are mandatory,
people seldom use them. Too often they pay an appalling price to feel
and look cool.
Apart from the motorists, the reckless driving by the Sumo and Tipper
drivers too is significantly responsible for the rising accident deaths
in the Valley. Besides, there appears to be another universal truth
underlying Kashmir’s soaring traffic death rates: fatalities increase
with rising incomes. This means Kashmir’s statistics are bound to get
uglier.
Kashmir has exploding middle classes whose members are reaching for the
car keys for the very first time- yet it will be years before the Valley
is able to fully afford the costs of safer and wider roads. Traffic
accidents can be ascribed to myriad other factors. With innumerable new
cars and fledgling drivers clogging the transportation system of
Kashmir’s major towns and the capital city strict enforcement of
traffic laws is crucial.
Unfortunately enforcement is the weakest link in the road safety chain.
Corruption among the traffic section of police is no secret. The traffic
cops usually help people get off the hook for traffic violations for
petty monetary gains. Corruption has now become part of our culture.
Given the rising road accident rate strict enforcement of laws is a
must.
We have plenty of laws. It is the enforcement that is lacking. If
measures are not taken to improve road safety through strict enforcement
of traffic rules then in the coming years it seems inevitable that
people will continue to die in road accidents on Kashmir’s mean
streets.
The
writer, Shakeel-ur-Rehman,
may be contacted by e-mail at: lifeline_03@yahoo.co.in
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