Every year at this time ‘Road Safety Week’ is observed to create awareness among the road users. The initiative is good but if one gives a second thought over the whole exercise one would realise nothing has changed on the surface. The rate of accidents and lives lost on the roads have increased every year adding to worsening traffic scenario is the unruly matador service which hardly has any respect for rules and concern for other road-users, pedestrians giving no consideration for vehicular traffic, motorists and walkers on phone, traffic jams without any reason or rhyme all these and many other risks one comes across if you are a vehicle user on Jammu roads. Seeing the growing chaos on the roads one is surprised what benefit such ‘weeks’ have, when the actual beneficiary-the road-user-is not going to change. The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, keeping in view of the trend of road accidents, had asked the Jammu and Kashmir Government to set up State Road Safety Council and District Road Safety Committees to address the issue of road safety, education of vehicle operators, enforcement, engineering (roads as well as vehicles) and emergency care. Though Road Safety Council was formed during the tenure of Madhav Lal as Chief Secretary of the State but its fate remains a mystery till date with District Road Safety Committees yet to come into existence. Though every year road safety week is organised in a ritualistic manner the State Road Safety Policy remains a distant dream and every time an accident takes place always the question on safety of passengers or others remains always unanswered.
