Just do it

After a lot of hue and cry and announcements of new laws no improvements seem to have taken place in the tragic saga of traffic deaths in Karachi. Every day I look at the city pages of various newspapers and am haunted by reports of young men and women, elderly people and sometimes the sole bread earners becoming victims of traffic accidents.

Mostly it is motorcyclists including husbands and wives who become victims and one wonders what a catastrophe this must be for the families they leave behind and who takes care of their children and elderly parents if they have any as in most families specially in the middle classes there is one or two bread earners for families comprising of 10 to 12 individuals. Traffic accidents are not limited to the residents of Karachi but are a global phenomenon.

You will be surprised to know that every year road accidents generate about 120,000 fatalities and 2.4 million injuries in the European Union and here road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults. As far as individual countries are concerned in Austria there are 42.8 victims of traffic accidents per 10000 inhabitants while in Germany there are 39.7 victims per 10,000 individuals and in Portugal there are 33.5 victims per 10,000 inhabitants while in Belgium there are 32.2 victims per 10,000 inhabitants.

The most surprising statistic is about our neighbor India. Traffic accident deaths here are just mind boggling. Every hour 19 Indians are killed in road accidents. There are 461 deaths per day, 1.68 lakhs deaths a year. Highest in the world. According to Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari,”We are losing an estimated 3 percent of India’s GDP because of this”.

I don’t know about the rest of the world though I strongly suspect that most of the traffic accidents in Europe and America are the result of drinking and driving but in Pakistan traffic accidents are result of blatant disregard of traffic rules, vehicles’ noncompliance with any safety standards and overworked and tired drivers trying to make both ends meet by working extra hours leading to fatigue and loss of desired reaction in case of an emergency situation like a motorcycle suddenly crossing their path or some other vehicle changing lanes without proper signaling.

All this is happening because we don’t have the kind of traffic police that is required for a multidimensional and complicated city like Karachi and of course the absence of required equipment that is used by such a force in a large metropolis like Karachi.

How far back we are technically can be gauged by the fact that as early as in the seventies the equipment that police forces in Europe and Canada were using is still missing from our police force. All police cars had computers linked to the central data base of the country much like our NADRA.

When the police stopped any vehicle they would ask for their driving licence and request the driver to keep sitting in their vehicle while the policeman went back to his car and fed the data on your licence to within a few seconds get the whole information about you including any unpaid fines. This was not all but at the same time the data will tell the police if you were wanted by the police on some other charges or were absconding from the law for some other reason.

Not only traffic violators could be apprehended but also fugitives from justice. In NADRA we have a world-class facility for identification and data. I can’t see any reason why we are not using it to shore up our traffic control. If we can’t supply new vehicles due to budgetary constraints at least we can install such machines in the vehicles that are available, giving a big boost to law enforcement and traffic control at the same time.

In the meantime, our traffic police should at least take to task vehicles that are openly flouting the law such as motor-cycles with no number plates, no lights of any sort and blatantly riding against one way and even on pedestrian walks.

There are also large high class vehicles owned by the rich and powerful that drive at night with blinding lights making it impossible for others to see their path clearly thus naturally inviting accidents. Heavy vehicles that are technically unfit for the road driven by overworked drivers. No need to loudly announce one campaign or the other but as the popular slogan goes “Just do it”.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025