Global Status Report (GSR) on road safety 2013, which is published by WHO, has emphasised on the need of taking urgent action to intensify the road safety as the current trends suggest that by 2030 road traffic deaths will become leading cause of death. As per the statistics available on the portal of Pakistan Bureau of Statistics as many as 4,672 people lost their lives in road accidents last year in the country and around 9,864 people got injured in total 8,885 road accidents reported.
The report also highlighted that main reasons behind road accidents were overloading, poor road construction, ignorance of traffic rules, rash driving, untrained driver, one wheeling, use of cell phones and/or drugs during driving, traffic violations like signal crossing, wrong parking and wrong overtaking, etc besides the brake failures and damaged/expired tyres.
While suggesting the initiatives to cope with the situation, experts emphasised that major causes of accidents should not be ignored which are endangering millions of lives in the country. Experts said, "We need to act everyday to reduce loss of life at this rate. We need to have a solid and foolproof implementation of road safety plans which involves educating youth and teenagers about the importance of life as they are usually the ones putting not only theirs but others' lives at risk by over-speeding or doing one wheeling either just for fun, show-off or to meet deadlines."
They mentioned that it is very easy in Pakistan to drive a commercial vehicle either a bus or a heavily loaded truck leave alone a car without having a driving licence while many with the driving licences had it made illegally without even bothering to pass the pre-requisite examination. The authorities concerned should take notice of such practices and bring the system back to the right track to ensure the road safety as many of these drivers don't even have ability to read the traffic signs properly.
Additionally, there is no criteria to judge the physical fitness of a commercial vehicle or a car in Pakistan which is proliferating the rate of fatal accidents in the country along with it claiming more and more lives every year, they said. Fitness tests means money for the Inspectors or else how come over 30-year-old buses and trucks would be allowed to ply on our roads. No bus, truck or any other commercial vehicle produced before 1985 are allowed to operate.
Many drivers don't care about the condition of their vehicle's tyres and often keep on using them for longer periods and these tyres loose the road grip eventually causing accidents. A law should be passed that makes it compulsory for all vehicles to change their tyres when the tyre tread depth reaches 1/6 of the original tread depth as is the practice in the civilised countries. Moreover, those who do care and change the tyres in time are often end up purchasing used tyres or smuggled overage tyres or even winter tyres to operate their vehicles in the hot climate experienced here. Smuggled overage tyres are washed, re-stamped with latest dates, wrapped and sold openly in the market.
While regretting the fact that unsuspecting and innocent public buy these tyres which are not at all safe for road application by any standard, experts added that as we can not sell expired medicines or food items by embossing new expiry date on the packaging due to the fact they are injurious to health. Similarly, the quality of tyre can neither be restored nor be enhanced by merely stamping new dates. It is simply putting innocent/unsuspecting public lives in danger.
They also explained that there is also a huge influx of used winter tyres in the country which are not at all suitable for our hot climates. These winter tyres are not even suitable for the western world's mild summers and therefore pose a big safety and performance risk in our native environment.
Experts concluded, "concrete steps such as imposing heavy penalties on crossing speed limits, banning one wheeling, underage driving, imparting safety awareness from childhood, establishing a stringent system to assess physical fitness of a car from its brakes to tyres condition, and taking punitive actions against the importers of unlawful practices, can help in preventing injuries and death from the roads of Pakistan."
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