BLUNT BUTCHER
On Day-2 of the Road Safety Week, killer roads have claimed yet another toll of seven lives near Sopore in Kashmir. It may be sheer coincidence that the mishap occurred the day when Inspector General of Police was pleading for zero-tolerance on road mishaps nearly 50 kilometers away in Srinagar. The occasion was prefixed and not the accident. It was predestined; the road managers would say to shrug off their responsibility, as streamlining or regulating traffic is none of their duty. Their pursuits are certainly different!
Soon after the mishap, shock messages kept trickling in, from those struggling to form the government, even before bodies were being driven out of mortuaries for burial. The Governor has also expressed his grief. However, nobody is asking how an overloaded cab missed the attention of ‘alert and agile’ traffic and police cops enroute.
The shock messages too remain ‘good fortune’ of those who die in bulk; otherwise those dying in ones or duos remain unsung. Just a month or so earlier, a young boy was dragged from running bike near Bhagwati Nagar by men in blues, who took sadistic pleasure in watching red blood spilling over the road rather than shifting their hunt to hospital. Another young life got cut short. The cops were arrested and freed to prowl for other targets.
On Day-2 of the Week, Akhnoor Road Crossing- three kilometers ahead of the city’s famous Jewel Chowk– braved the brunt of first massive traffic jam in the evening. Over an hour long jam depicted the vulnerability of Jammu roads to ever increasing vehicular population and mismanagement of the traffic managers. As no cop was seen around for first half an hour, it was left to the people to pave their way through the thick jam and in turn the already complex problem got further confounded.
Moving in a car is a Herculean task for every driver during the peak hours on the congested roads right side of the River Tawi. When it is not VIP movement, it is the domain of public transport carriers, who ‘enjoy’ exclusive right over roads. The posturing and arrogance of many of these drivers towards the private car operators who ‘dare’ and seek passage to overtake is a common scene, as they remain either dropping or picking up the passengers in the middle of roads, jeopradising their safety and causing traffic halts after every fifty yards. This all happens under the nose of traffic managers and in fact with tacit connivance of some of them. The traffic signal system too died its death in infancy. But for one or two crossings in Gandhi Nagar area, the mechanism had failed soon after its installation and the insensitive government had no cheeks to carry out inquiry and punish the guilty responsible for bungling of poor tax-payers hard earned money.
The traffic problem is not new to Jammu; it has been troubling the people for years together and the response of the government has been just to carry out studies and making tall claims and hollow promises. A recent traffic jam in China made headlines on the international media. One wonders whether the chronic problem facing the people of Jammu and Kashmir State even reaches the Director General of Police, least the Governor, who has been issuing desperate messages after each accident, pleading for some sort of mechanism to maintain traffic discipline. Now that he will be moving around, the Governor should not get misled by smooth trafficking during his movement. He should remember that such a smooth drive is at the cost of common man who is being made to halt much before the moving of cavalcade. The condition of traffic on Jammu roads is very bad. One only wishes a person no less than a Governor to have impromptu and unannounced city drive in a private car to see for himself the enormity of the problem.
Two years ago, the Governor had made a serious beginning, despite being just a Constitutional head but given the ‘administrative atmosphere’ those got lost in the din of chaos and confusion. It had been agreed during the high level discussions that Information Technology would be applied for preparing a Comprehensive Accident Data Base Management and Analysis System to ascertain causes of road accidents and to devise effective approaches to eliminating these. It was also agreed to undertake regular Road Safety Audits and addressing all the contributing factors for fatal road accidents; upgrading roads, erecting protection barriers, creating adequate wayside facilities for the drivers and travelling public; developing emergency medical services and deployment of ambulances to attend to the emergencies arising out of road accidents.
The road safety auditing is an area that needs focused attention. This may be the last priority for the government but not the Governor, who can take a bit of his time off to diagnose the malady.