Road safety measures

While chairing a high level meeting to review the Road Safety measures in J&K on Saturday, the Honorable Lieutenant Governor Shri Manoj Sinha directed the officials of Traffic Department to act tough and take strong action against those who violate traffic rules and regulations and also temper with speed limit devices installed in their vehicles. The Honorable LG also directed the concerned officials to conduct an in-depth causative analysis of road accidents so that a multi pronged road safety strategy gets developed. It is a fact that rising number of accidents paints a grim picture of the situation across India. As per some independent surveys, one serious road accident occurs every minute in India, one person dies in a road traffic accident every four minutes, and over 1.30 lakh people are killed in road traffic accidents every year. Nowadays in J&K accidents have become common. Kashmir Valley, in particular, is facing a rising graph of road accidents. Considering the official figures for the past four years, the accidents have taken a heavy toll on human lives. No one can deny that the UT has witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of traffic in recent years while roads have not expanded commensurately in length and width. The problem is also that traffic in the UT has become messy and the Traffic Department has not gone for measures to regulate it effectively. The UT has also failed to provide the required roads. Inadequate infrastructure is another problem hampering the smooth flow of traffic.  While the traffic department is battling against the congestion in cities and towns, making way for safe passage of vehicles that travel at snail’s pace, there is little attention applied on road accidents and their causes. Poor and haphazard planning aggravates it as there is poor sense of land use which has resulted in constricted roads and streets in most parts of the valley. Traffic department and the government are not the only ones to play spoilsport. Blatant violation of all safety and traffic rules and regulations does seem to complete the sad story of road incidents. The government has to take appropriate measures to make the roads safe. People can blame weather, winding roads of Kashmir, concerned authorities and officials, but they can’t wash off their own hands by showing freewheeling attitude and total neglect for traffic rules. It depends on all of us, and unless we do something about it, it is not going to change. We should all help make roads safe for our own safety and welfare.