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| November 19, 2006 | Sunday | Shawwal 26, 1427 |
Out on a limb
LAHORE, Nov 18: On average 40 people are killed every month in accidents on city roads. Around 70 others suffer injuries. For over a year, driving on the road amid unruly and disorganised traffic has become an uphill task. Increasing number of vehicles, lack of road capacity and other infrastructure to manage the load and poor traffic management have turned the roads into a driveway to hell for many irate drivers out there.
Three-year-old Saad and his father Manzar Qureshi, 32, are among 344 people who lost their lives in accidents in the city this year. From Jan 1 to Oct 31, a total of 578 accidents were reported in the city; the figure could possibly double if you included non-reported incidents.
In 2005, 38 people on an average were killed every month in road accidents in Lahore, and the number of those who lost lives on roads in 2004 was 447, almost a matching number last year too. Over 600 were injured in accidents in 2004.
Baby Saad, to name just one family, together with his father and mother, was hit by a rashly-driven van at Bhatti Chowk some two months ago. The family riding motorcycle was on their way home on Ravi Road when the accident took place. Saad’s mother, Anila, was left critically injured; to this day, she lies unconscious and under treatment at a hospital.
The fate of this case is likely going to be no different from other such cases: no progress as far as the police are concerned and no conviction as far as erring driver goes. Official record says that not a single person was convicted in cases of accidents in 2005 or the preceding year. The family of the deceased, as usually happens in such accidents, is facing pressure for reconciliation from the police and the owner of the transport vehicle who insists that this is the only solution.
The driver of the van that had killed the child and his father has not been arrested as he had escaped from the scene, says investigation officer Muhammad Rafiq of the Lower Mall police. The story he narrates of the progress in the case is not strange, and makes crystal clear as to what happens in such cases besides the ordeal the family of the victims faces.
The police official said van owner Haji Shaukat, when approached, told him that the man driving the van at the time of the accident was never employed by him. On investigation, he added, he had found out that the driver employed by Shaukat for his van had sublet the vehicle to another driver, who hit the motorcycle of the family involved in the accident.
Rafiq says he has to do a lot of hard work to trace the whereabouts of the escaped driver. Reason for doing the hard work is tremendous pressure from the family as one of the deceased’s brothers works in the ministry of interior and two of his cousins are lawyers, he added. “Otherwise, you know, who cares?”
The driver wanted in the case is a resident of a village near Gujrat, Rafiq said, adding that Shaukat had visited the village twice, but “had found the house locked”. Asked as to why he himself did not make an effort to arrest the accused, the police official said it was the responsibility of the owner to produce the driver before the police.
And what is next now, you may ask. He replies: “I have asked Shaukat to satisfy the family. He (Shaukat) would be meeting the family in a day or two... What else?” he added.
Although the family is insisting on fighting the case to the finish, he added, there was no solution other than an out-of-court settlement.
Long hours of traffic jams have become a routine in the city. Many say that the sheer traffic load is the main reason for fatal accidents, especially those involving recklessly-driven intra-city road transport. Lack of training on the part of public transport drivers and poor civic sense among the public, besides a host of other reasons, are the other contributing factors for the menace. Corruption on part of traffic police officials, too, plays an important role in the mess. Bribes known as “monthly” among traffic police circles for letting intra-city road transport vehicles play havoc with the public is an open secret.
The number of violations committed on city roads can tell more about the traffic situation. Official record says there have been a total of 422,201 traffic violations in Lahore in the first six months of this year. There were a total of 933,937 violators in 2005 against 771,388 in 2004.
Motorcyclists appear to be the biggest violators. The city traffic police caught 217,617 of them in the six months. There have been 47,588 drivers who violated traffic signals in the period under review. Some 13,380-plus violated the one-way rule, while 108,073 violated the stop line. The record says that at least 985 people were caught while overtaking the wrong way, while 2,017 did not have number plates on their vehicles and 57,799 had wrong or faulty ones.
At least 108,146 motorcyclists were caught on charges of not using helmets, while 5,510 drivers committed moving violations and another 9,440 parked their vehicles in prohibited areas. A total of 8,676 with smoke-emitting vehicles were also caught in the period under review. Rickshaw drivers also remained one of the main violators as 79,987 of them were caught and fined.
Other violations included use of pressure horns, overcharging by cab drivers, tinted glass, overloading, one-wheeling, broken or out of order lights.
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