LAHORE - According to World Health Organisation, 35,000 people die in accidents in Pakistan every year, while more than 50,000 are injured and suffer from life-long disabilities.
According to a government report, a traffic accident occurs every five minutes in Pakistan, in which someone is injured or killed.
Every morning we get to read the news of numerous traffic accidents in the newspapers. Every day, many people lose their precious lives due to these traffic accidents, and many become temporarily or permanently disabled.
With increasing traffic day by day, the rate of traffic accidents is also in-creasing at an alarming rate. In this situation, we should examine the
causes of traffic accidents and support measures taken at the government lev-el to reduce the rate of traffic accidents to ensure the safety of precious human lives.
Overspeeding, careless driving, poor condition of roads, vehicle breakdown, overloading, one-way violation, overtaking, signal violation, untrained driv-ers, and use of mobile phones while driving.
These include unlicensed driving, brake failure, and over-inflated tyres. The most serious of these is the road user’s rash behaviour.
About 80pc to 90pc of traffic accidents occur due to careless behaviour, but we are not ready to change our behavioor, and this is the main reason for traffic problems and accidents in Pakistan.
Traffic accidents cannot be reduced over time.
While examining the traffic accidents and issues, it is interesting to note that there are laws for motorised vehicles, but there is no legislation for slow-moving vehicles like donkeys and bullock carts or pedestrians. These people who use the road are not only above the law but are also the main cause of traffic accidents on a large scale.
While teenagers do not follow the traffic rules due to their impulsive behav-iour and ignore the traffic , signs, and rules, often the youth are not trained, but they have a passion for driving at high speeds, which is Count-ing causes accidents. Often, minor and novice motorcycle rickshaw drivers do not have licenses, thus putting their lives and others at risk due to igno-rance of traffic rules.
Many people build substandard speed breakers in front of their houses, which causes accidents.
Commercial vehicle drivers’ passion for overtaking and speeding also leads to fatal accidents.
To raise traffic awareness, subjects related to traffic rules should be in-cluded in the curriculum, so that the new generation can be prepared to avoid traffic accidents in the future.
They also have the responsibility to play a positive role in making the roads safe from accidents by following the rules.
In Pakistan, the term “driver education” has usually been applied to pro-grammes for beginner drivers that consist of in-car practical training.
Traditional driver education takes place in a single Public sector colleges and universities are at large, covering every area of Pakistan to provide formal education.
If driving education is added to the syllabus of public sector colleges and universities, Pakistan can teach thousands of students each year. Public sec-tor involvement in driving education can help with universal access and so-cial equity.
