Pakistan’s landscape is full of road accidents which is a serious public health issue. Why road safety? It is pertinent to mention that according to WHO 2018 report, every year in Pakistan around 27,582 people die on roads due to traffic accidents.
Around 50,000 people become a victim of disability due to road crashes. It costs about 500 billion rupees due to the maintenance of vehicles, decreasing the market value of the crashed vehicle and expenditures on the medication. Every morning when we get up and come on roads, we see anomie with public and private transport.
We must keep in mind this is not only Pakistan where the road safety problem exists. In developing countries the issue of road safety is chronical. For example, 1.53 million people died in 2018 and even in every 24 seconds occurred a road accident on this planet.
Importantly, in the developing countries possess 16% of total vehicles of the world are but they have a share of 44% road accidents.
However, this process is reversed in the developed world where only 16% deaths on the roads while their volume of vehicle is 44%.
The question arises: why are always developing societies the victim of road accidents? One interpretation norms and values are attached to road safety? Those technologically developed societies who have discovered and innovated vehicles, they also developed the norms and values in order to operate and drive vehicles.
On the other hand, those less developed societies have no or less production of vehicles, they always ignore the roads safety, they always take it as fun or joke. Ultimately, these societies are victims of road accidents and it is becoming a serious public health problem as per sociological interpretation.
Meanwhile, less developed societies interpret is fate and destiny, but the research on the subject says only 2% chances of accidents and death are due to fate. Nevertheless, it is the State that should train and socialize their drivers in order to save lives. We understand that state roles are also significant in order to protect public health.
In developed countries, the state role always as a ”vigilant” to developed or make new rules and regulation to protect the public health of their citizens. The road safety is almost ignored in the developing world and they have less priority to protect the public health rather they are concerned about border security. Similar to developing societies, public health is the least priority by the state of Pakistan. Owing to obvious reasons, the state is less interested to invest in the public health security of its citizens.
Therefore, road safety is one of the most abandon social issue in the country. What could be done in this kind of affairs? Pakistan must think about this public health issue and devise a public policy that protects and secure the public health on roads. One of the biggest reasons of the road crashes is a motorcycle.
Owing to obvious reasons of affordability of the vehicle and easy to purchase and use, but motorcycle driver don’t wear helmets during driving. They don’t bother to follow the rules and regulation of road safety and thus put the fellow citizens’ lives at risk.
Although they are on two wheels and more vulnerable yet they are careless their own health as well as other fellow citizen’s health.
About 60 to 70% of road accidents are due to motorcycles. Once if they fell or slip there is a chance of serious injury and risk to death.
The second reason of the road crashes is the usage of the cell phones and other gadgets, over-speeding of vehicle, wrong U-Turn and no usage of the indicators.
Drivers in Pakistan don’t follow the vehicle indicators or even they don’t have their own vehicles’ indicators. As a result, vehicles coming behind doesn’t know where the vehicle is heading to and which direction wants to go and it leads to severe crashes.
The government must tight-up some of the measures in order to control the increasing volume of road accidents. The state must have legislation in order to implement heavy fines. It is the heavy fines that make conformists to drivers and all the vehicles operators to be conformists.
It can secure the lives of the citizen. The drivers’ behavior will only change if there are heavy fines, effective monitoring and implementation of the traffic rules.
We have more chances to be a victim of road accidents. Electronic surveillance system could be deployed that can be empowered through high resolutions cameras with the assistance of the microchip installed in every vehicle and obviously through a collection of heavy fines.
It is the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan to be vigilant about the traffic volume, its effective monitoring, regularization, and management. Road safety is the major health problem and the Government is responsible to ensure the public health and social security of citizens.
The writer is Associate Professor of Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad. He can be reached: zaman@qau.edu.pk
