Jammu and Kashmir has seen 5,836 accidents in the last year claiming 917 lives this was stated by the Minister for Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution (CAPD), Choudhary Zulfkar Ali in the Legislative Council on Wednesday. The dismal picture talks of safety of lives on road. Since Jammu and Kashmir is a mountainous region with roads traversing from very difficult to dangerous stretches needs to be relooked to at least provide safety of life for the user. This has been years together story where numbers on casualty were never comfortable one. There is need to devise a road safety policy for all the stakeholder departments including traffic police, agencies responsible for road constructions and road users. Minimizing road accidents should be the guideline for bringing out a road safety policy which the state till date does not have. Howsoever every year road safety weeks and seminars are organized by the police educational institutions with school children involved in spreading safety awareness besides that there is no serious thinking of evolving a safety formula so that lives can be saved. What is pathetic is highways and arterial roads criss-crossing the state does not have reachable trauma hospitals which can provide the first point medical assistance to the accident victims. In the absence of a road safety policy in case of an accident lies not on the government but the vehicle users. Even the little bit efforts made during the Governor’s rule to bring in the safety policy has been confined to cold storage and it looks as if the government is not serious on the issue. As per the draft of Road Safety Policy, in order to provide safer roads and mobility, the Government will establish centre of excellence across to create capacity in road safety research as well as human resource for road safety engineering within the R&B Department. It is also learnt that the draft policy also envisages the social aspect of road accident and post-accident implications and concerns. Now in this background, it will be imperative if the Road Safety policy is not formalised and implemented because delay means allowing
innocent lives exposed to the threat.
