Road accidents are one of the leading causes of deaths in Pakistan. The people who die on the roads in Pakistan majorly include those falling in the age bracket of 15-29. According to a 2014 report by World Health Organisation, 30,310 or 2.69% of people in Pakistan die due to road accidents each year. This means that about 20 people out of 100,000 die in road accidents in a year, making Pakistan rank 67 in the world for a higher percentage of road traffic accidents. A report in 2013 by World Health Organisation stated that by 2030, road accidents will become 5th major cause of deaths.
From the data collected over the past 10 years, fifteen people die each day in traffic accidents across Pakistan. Punjab has proven to have the highest road accident deaths, followed by Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. From a report released in 2014, by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, a total of 8,885 accidents were registered by police authorities out of which, 4,672 people were killed. The report also mentioned that, from 2004-2013, a total of 51,416 people died out of 97,739 accidents across the country. Out of the total number of people reported dead, 29,524 were killed in Punjab, 9,639 in Sindh, 9,494 in KPK and 2,250 in Balochistan. The figures mentioned are of those recorded by the authorities; this means that the numbers will be larger, considering unreported incidences.
Road accidents are in high numbers because people ignore traffic rules and road signs, break signals, over speed, recklessly perform wheelie on bikes, use mobile phones while driving, overtake from the wrong side, use drugs and wrongly park. Moreover, people take safety features as the least important thing when they buy cars, as proved lately by the third edition of PakWheels.com Auto Industry Survey. Many people believe that the government is not doing enough to educate drivers on traffic rules and regulations. A lot of people who drive, don’t have licenses and those who have licenses, got them illegally, without taking part in any driving tests. Many people and officials suggest adding driving courses to university and college curriculums. According to traffic police, 80% of Pakistanis don’t follow basic safety precautions like, fastening of seat belts, or wearing helmets.
Despite these high and alarming figures, local car manufacturers in Pakistan aren’t doing enough to provide safety in their cars. Basic safety features like airbags, ABS and EBD are not installed in cars manufactured in Pakistan.
Do you think the Pakistani auto industry is doing very little on vehicle safety?
1. Toyota sponsored a road safety research program. I mean Indus motors.
They did in under their CSR program – meanwhile their Corolla Z (2000-2008 model) was skidding on braking and ending up under trucks. Hypocrisy indeed.
2. Observe the trend. Most traffic crashes involving single vehicle are of brand new vehicles of the private category. As the photos in this article also show.
On the other hand, most traffic crashes involving two or more vehicles include at least one very ancient commercial vehicle (bus or truck).
See I used the term crash, as road accidents can be of a different type such as car catching fire (there were incidents even involving school vans and intercity buses), recently an oil tanker caught fire resulting in many deaths.
3. Crashes caused by pedestrians’ mistakes have not been recorded at all. IMHO pedestrians should also get a license for walking properly.
4. The crashes (when they happen) are high speed crashes, but then the speed of traffic in Pakistan is not high at all. It takes ages to reach from point A to point B, whether it is intra-city commute or intercity travel.
Another major factor is the impatience factor that is drooling in our blood. Every damn f#$%er is in a hurry irrespective of how major or minor an accident he/she may be causing but he/she wants to reach their destination quicker than everybody else. Sabar to kerna hi nahi hia naa .. Be it rickshaw, motorbike or car. Koi kisi ko civic sense ke tor per hi rasta de de ye kabhi ho hi nahi sakta …
End result is an accident time bomb always ticking near by waiting to explode.
ROFLMFAO at “pedestrians should also get a license for walking properly”!
At night most of the drivers use high beam. One of the reason of accidents at night. Commercial vehicles r the most culprits in doing so. No traffic education at any level. Even traffic police doesn’t know the rules properly. How they guide people.
you are absolutely right.. But.. there are some more facts if they dont offend any one!! 99% of Road vehicle user (specially ones with cars) use high beams plus fog lamps at night where u actually dont need them. My mechanic got an accident few days back due to an ass hole driving with high beams which result in temporary blindness & due to that he slammed his bike into road barrier & broke his legs.. Another main thing is we dont actually want to follow our lane (the lane in which we are suppose to be driving) instead u will see peoples driving in between 2 lane & that too will cause accidents. We actually cant educate peoples until the road laws are strictly applied to everyone!!
We ourselves are responsible. Padestrians don’t use their bridges, motorcyclists with no helmets, honestly how many of us stop on red light and drive in our lanes or use indicators or have a basic road sense, how many of us drive with low beams at night and haven’t swaped OEM lights for HIDs? Putting blame on others is too easy.. nobody looks at their own contribution to accidents
There’s no licensing need for pedestrians and cyclists but I’ve never seen any police officer stopping illegal pedestrian crossing or any cyclist running red light.
There’s only one way to reduce the number of accident. First you launch a nationwide road safety campaign, revolutionize your traffic police; give them speed guns, HD Night Vision Cams and cars/bikes and establish modern Traffic Courts. And then start aggressive crackdown against violators whether he’s driving an Alto, Landcruiser, 70cc bike or he’s just a pedestrian!
I made a working plan to make Islamabad safe few years ago. I tried to contact ITP and some NGOs but then I give up after realizing that no one is interested in improving road safety.
Impressive reach PML (n) they will deff. help you out.
Even were they interested, your working plan was a failure.
Where is the mention of building/upgrading and maintaining proper infrastructure?
Small example: Aggressive crackdown against lane changing can only happen when lane marking are present in the first place. So, infrastructure comes first, implementation comes second.
Aggressive crackdown against traffic signal violation can only happen when there is electricity. If there is no electricity and the traffic signals are out of order, how can that aggression happen?
You have new idea of how the democratic system should work.
Why approach a political party? Is the political party incharge of implementing improvements? The government institutions for doing that are already present.
I agree BUT my plan was only for selected roads where there are proper lane marking with reflectors and for the signals, we can install small soler system to keep them running 24/7.
Remember, There’re million solution to a problem, question is how far are you willing to go!
My plan has nothing to do with N League but it’s all about Police and NHA etc.
I don’t want to disheart you.
But – now you are telling that the plans have limitations. It would be useful on only a few select roads. What about the time when the roads and their lane marking become old. What about when the potholes appear.
Draconian laws and aggressive punishments rarely work.
We can do more research and find solutions but it isn’t possible without Good Governance and community participation
do you know whose the owner of the lexus or the vigo?