The roads all over the state have become death traps. Hundreds of lives are lost every year in road accidents. On Saturday not one but one after another tragedy occurred on the roads of Kashmir. Six persons, including five residents of Bihar, were killed, and fifteen others were injured in a head on collision between two vehicles on the Srinagar-Jammu highway near Qazigund. Five more accidents, injuring over a dozen of people on the same day from Srinagar city and other parts of the valley. In Islamabad, Anantnag   protests erupted after an army vehicle ran over a teenager killing him on the spot. Such accidents have the potential of snowballing into major crisis. On an average four to five, people are killed on Srinagar-Jammu highway in road accidents.  Hardly, there is a month when a tragedy of high magnitude does not occur on the Ramban-Doda-Kishtiwar Road. 
The state administration after every accident announces that it was initiating schemes for ensuring road safety. Many a time it even announces very high-sounding measures and traffic regulations but these are hardly implemented. The traffic department in fact after every accident goes into hibernation till another grave accident wakes it up.
There can be no denying that bad road conditions and overcrowding in public transport are important contributory factors for a large number of road accidents in the hilly areas of the state.   However, major causes are corruption, lack of accountability in the traffic department and the absence of a proper traffic management system in the state. The state is yet to recognize traffic management as an altogether different science than the routine policing.  The traffic management department is an extension of the vast police organization in the state. The officers and personnel for the traffic department are recruited from one or the other organ of the police department without any specialized training. To make traffic a viable and effective organization there is need for delinking it from the police department. The traffic system in the state needs to be put on scientific lines and the traffic personnel given a specialized training. 

Lastupdate on : Mon, 12 Mar 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 IST