The govt needs to wakeup
11 more lives were lost to the bad roads and difficult terrain on Thursday as a bus carrying students plunged into a gorge in south Kashmir Shopian area. The fresh road mishap is once again a grim reminder that blood continues to be spilled on the killer roads and nobody is doing anything about it.
The number of road fatalities has been witnessing an increased trend as it has become a routine in the entire state to witness road mishaps. What seems more ironic is that these killings hardly unnerve us anymore.
Notably, the state has recorded the highest number of fatalities in a decade last year. According to data provided by government sources the number of people killed in road accidents in the state is twice of the number of fatalities — which includes civilians, security forces and militant deaths — caused by unrest in the state.
Just the previous year 908 people were killed in 5,529 road accidents across the state till November. Another 7,250 were injured in these deadly mishaps as well.
As per the records for the last eight years, on an average, 15 accidents take place every day. A person gets killed in an accident every seven hours while someone is left injured every hour.
Alarmingly, a recent study that was conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in 2017 examined cases from the year 1996 to 2016. The study pointed out that Jammu and Kashmir tops the list in deaths and disabilities caused by road accidents.
The study also revealed that accidents and violence accounted for 41% of deaths of people in the age group of 15-39. Disease and illness accounted for the remaining percentage of deaths.
Though the data is alarming but it has hardly unnerved anyone in the state administration. Apart from the customary condemnation and in some cases announcement of compensation by those in power, nothing substantial has been done to control the ever increasing road fatalities and injuries.
During the last one decade, over ten thousand people have died in road accidents. The highest number of causalities was reported in the year 2012 which was put at 1165.
In the last ten years, sixty thousand road accidents have taken place in the state and over eighty thousand people have suffered injuries. Most numbers of injured were reported in the year 2011.
Most of the road accidents take place in Jammu division owing to the difficult terrain in most parts of the Chenab valley. In Kashmir region most deaths and injuries are reported from Srinagar district.
The high incidence of road mishaps should have acted as a wakeup call for the state administration, but nothing of that sort has happened. Though the state has introduced the Jammu and Kashmir Road Safety Council Act, 2018, that advocated the formation of a State Road Safety Council, the proposal has not moved beyond papers.
What we need is an immediate intervention at various levels so that a mass awareness programme is initiated to reach out to the people of the state and aware them about the dangers of travel and driving recklessly. It is high time that the administration wakes up to the call, otherwise the fatalities will continue to mount with every passing day.
KV Network
