So you think Pakistan has perhaps more traffic fatalities than any other country in the rest of the world. You cannot be blamed for such a line of thinking, given the traffic accidents landscape in our country.
Try again. It is the Dominican Republic, which currently has the highest road fatality rate in the world. What does that really mean? It means that for every 100,000 residents, 67 will die each year in road-related incidents—a rate more than 25 times higher than in the UK and Pakistan. There are of course countries with lower traffic accident rates and some of them lowest in the world.
The countries with lowest traffic accident rates are Iceland, Norway and Sweden: a little far away from us and in terms of traffic discipline and maintaining some semblance of sanity, which is way ahead of us.
So what about Pakistan? The country records approximately 11.9 traffic accident fatalities per 100,000 people annually. You might not believe it but actually while this rate is slightly lower than the broader Asia-Pacific average of 15.2, it remains a severe public concern, with traffic accidents accounting for over 28,000 deaths across the country every year. These accidents also figure prominently in traffic fatalities globally.
Major causes include reckless driving, poor road conditions, and inadequate traffic management. It can be said with confidence that the main causes of violent deaths in Karachi are primarily traffic accidents and result of criminal activity.
Every day as I open the newspaper and turn to the pages that inform me about local news of Karachi, I am always stunned by the stories that highlight traffic accidents and violent deaths due to criminal activities. Not a day goes by that there are not at least two or three such stories resulting in the violent death of people of all ages.
The gruesome fact is that recently there have been traffic accidents in which more than one family member has expired in one single traffic accident. This happens as mostly riders on a motorcycle are over-run by heavy vehicles like dumper trucks and water tankers. This situation is not particular to Karachi but reflects the overall traffic accident rate across the country.
Traffic accidents in Karachi and resulting fatalities can be attributed mostly due to careless driving and disregard of traffic laws in which our friends on motorcycles take the lead. It is not uncommon for motorcyclists to overload their motorcycles, especially during the hours when children are transported from schools.
Believe it or not but every day you can watch this spectacle in which a frail motorcycle is nearly covered with bodies of children; some lying on the petrol tank, some on the carrier and others on in any empty space no matter how dangerous it is. There are two fundamental dangers lurking in this style of driving.
The driver has little control over the motorcycle and his stops and starts are very precarious. Sometimes the child is clinging to the petrol tank and ready to slip off on the road in case of a sudden jerk. It is the person driving the vehicle behind such overloaded motor cycles that is risking his or her life.
When an accident happens the people who will gather will not realise that the motorcycle driver was driving in such a risky mode and the first reaction always will be that a car owner hit a poor motorcycle owner who was going innocently on his way on his motorcycle.
Cars are torched and smashed even though the onus of the action that led to the accident lies squarely on the shoulders of the overburdened motorcycle owner. Yes there are also rash and negligent drivers of other vehicles such as dumper trucks and water tankers who drive recklessly and cause loss of life and recently they seem to have outnumbered other vehicles on the road in terms of reckless and dangerous driving.
Why am I writing on this subject is because we are close to Eid-ul-Azha and soon all vehicles or at least most of them will be used to transport animals dead and alive. I can already visualise overloaded motorcycles and Suzukis transporting meat, animals for sacrifice and butchers in a hurry to do their job and make maximum cash out of this opportunity.
I hope everyone will follow the rules and avoid acts that may possibly lead to accidents. Happy and safe Eid-ul-Azha to all.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is a well-known columnist
Comments