The shocking tragic news of another road accident involving a passenger bus on way from Reasi to Babber, like numerous happened before, has left every soul stunned to cry in askance “when shall this road mayhem end in state of Jammu and Kashmir?
The road tragedy that has taken toll of 24 dead and 48 critically injured, is though one amongst numerous before, shall never render the human hearts insensitive to this avoidable bloodletting, said BJP State Spokesperson S.S.Bijral. He said on an average over 6000 road accidents with over 1000 dead and 8000 injured happen in J&K annually, as per an official hand out. He said this figure, the double of the national average of accidents, speaks of the enormity of the situation prevailing and the attention it deserves to be paid.
It’s the poor section of society using buses as mode of their travel, become the worst victims of this havoc on the road. This is while they are bearing with crippling effect of high cost of living, they are thrown out of work- the source of their income- due to accidents, and get additionally burdened with neck breaking cost of medical treatment as injured if happened to be lucky to survive. Bijral said, with this hell broken upon them the relief announced by the administration, howsoever quick, comes a big joke. What they most need is safety on the road.
Bijral, the former IGP, said the cry of the time is the govt initiates measures fast to drastically minimize if not totally eliminate these tragedies befalling upon the poor people.. Accepting that oft quoted reasons of untrained drivers, heavy overloading, failure of traffic enforcement machinery are the causes of these accidents. He said that flaws in road engineering stay as the main culprit for causing road accidents and have never been assessed, addressed and rectified. It’s common knowledge that black spots once detected for being accident prone, rectified, the chances of accidents there get eliminated altogether. He suggested that Central Road Research Institute New Delhi, the pioneer in traffic management, developing traffic management system, road safety audit, developing design of transport infrastructure should be co-opted to conduct audit of our roads to end this chaos that usher havoc on the poor masses of the poor state. He said this coupled with accountable strict law enforcement should by all reason deprive this being addressed a mayhem
