DAWN - Features; April 24, 2007

Published April 24, 2007

The annoying minor traffic accident

By Aileen Qaiser


DESPITE the phenomenal increase in vehicles on the roads of Islamabad in recent years, traffic is still comparatively more orderly than in other cities, thanks in large part to the untiring efforts of the Islamabad Traffic Police.

While the policies of the ITP may have resulted in more traffic violators being caught, who due to their behaviour are a potential threat to life and property on the road, what the ITP appears to have little control over is the prevention of countless minor traffic accidents that occur daily, especially during rush hours.

These minor traffic accidents, which usually take place in traffic congestion and when vehicles are moving at relatively slow speed, may cause no injury or death or major damage to property, but nevertheless they can be quite annoying for motorists, mainly because of consequent vehicle repairs, which may run into thousands of rupees, apart from the time wasted in getting the repairs done.

Besides, in many cases these accidents inevitably result in quarrelling on the spot by the motorists involved, leading to frayed nerves and late appointments, and often traffic jams too for other motorists, at least until the ITP personnel arrive.

A lot of these minor accidents take place in accident-prone spots where such accidents have occurred many times before during rush hours. Around the Zero Point area for instance, there are at least three such accident-prone spots.

One is at the troublesome roundabout near the Islamabad Graveyard where the slip road from Kashmir Highway meets the roundabout. The second also involves a slip road — a steep and curving one — that leads onto the Islamabad-bound side of Kashmir Highway near the smaller of the two overhead bridges at Zero Point.

In both cases, accidents take place when the double line of cars on the single-lane slip roads try to inch and force their way onto the traffic congested roundabout and Kashmir Highway respectively.

The third accident-prone spot at the Zero Point area is at the beginning of the Islamabad-bound side of Faisal Avenue, just after the traffic intersection at Zero Point. Accidents usually take place on the double-lane road here because moving vehicles are jostling for space with stationary wagons and taxis, which frequently stop here to drop and pick up passengers.

In one single rush hour morning last week, accidents occurred in all three vulnerable spots involving a total of seven vehicles, including a bus, a wagon, a taxi and four other private cars.

Occupants of the affected vehicles were no doubt thankful that they were not involved in more serious or fatal accidents — damage to vehicles ranged from bad scratches to smashed lights, dented mudguards and broken bumpers. Nevertheless, they were miffed that the accidents meant unnecessary parting of cash from their pockets into the pockets of car denters and repairers, cash which for a taxi or wagon driver is not something that can be easily or readily spared.

Except for the accident on Faisal Avenue, which was very near the Zero Point intersection where ITP personnel are on duty, the latter were not even aware of the other two accidents since they are not places where ITP personnel are usually posted.

Established in January 2006 to maintain orderly traffic in the capital, the ITP’s very presence at many major and some minor intersections has become an impetus for motorists to ‘behave’. Knowing that they might be caught by the grey-uniformed policemen keeping a close eye on the traffic at these junctions, motorists generally tend not to cross even an amber light let alone a red light, stop well within the white line at the traffic signal and ensure that their cars are parked within the lines of their lanes.

And whenever the traffic lights are down, the flow of traffic is to a large extent unaffected because the ITP personnel are available on the spot to take over the job of the traffic lights.

ITP’s presence on several major arteries, where there is a tendency for motorists to speed, has also had its psychological effect on motorists. The fear of being caught by the crouching traffic policeman peering through his radar speed camera has restrained many a motorist from driving beyond the stipulated speed limit on these roads.

While this has resulted in an increased number of speed violators being caught, whether the introduction of the radar speed camera has actually managed to bring down the number of traffic accidents in the capital due to speeding can only be demonstrated if we had statistics on the number of accidents on these roads before and after the radar speed cameras were introduced, taking into consideration the proportion of the vehicle population before and after the speed cameras were brought in.

However in many places where ITP personnel are not present, for example at the two slip road junctions mentioned above near Zero Point, motorists tend to exhibit their real driving behaviour, which is characterised by impatience, no respect for the right of way of motorists coming from the right, and generally no respect for other traffic rules like single lane only and one way only.

The fact that these two places are accident-prone spots ought to warrant the posting of ITP personnel to direct traffic during morning and afternoon rush hours, at least until and when traffic flow in the area overall is improved with the construction of the interchange or flyover at Zero Point.

Several hours after the three minor accidents on the same fateful day, another slip road in the Zero Point area was the scene of a major head-on collision between two vehicles. This slip road on the edge of Shakarparian Hills joins Kashmir Highway with the Rawalpindi-bound side of the Islamabad Highway. The accident took place apparently because one of the cars was travelling in the wrong direction on this one way, steep and winding road.

It looks like the revamped and energised traffic police department has to work even harder to encourage motorists to obey traffic rules and ‘behave properly’ on the roads, if they want to be spared from accidents.

Meanwhile, motorists are eagerly waiting for the materialisation of various ongoing and in-the-pipeline road network improvement projects as well as a more efficient public transport system to ease traffic flow in Islamabad and thus reduce traffic accidents.

However, if these measures still prove unable to solve our urban transport problems, the authorities may eventually have to look at other less popular policies being adopted elsewhere like electronic road pricing and mobility management or travel demand management policies in the effort to reduce the traffic flow in our increasingly high traffic society fuelled by growing population and increasing car ownership.

Lawlessness ascribed to pervasive contempt for rule of law

By Sohail Sangi


LAWLESSNESS and loadshedding grabbed headlines in the Sindhi press last week.

The Awami Awaz says the government has failed abjectly to protect life and property, tall claims notwithstanding. The paper puts the problem down to a deeper malaise — a pervasive contempt for the rule of law.

The Ibrat writes that newspaper reports suggest the people of rural areas are living in a land where the law of the jungle prevails.

The daily says the authorities’ inaction is baffling, strengthening suspicions that some officials are in league with outlaws.

The Awami Awaz, in an editorial, lashes out at a proposal to create a new district in the east of Karachi by bifurcating Thatta district. The paper says the proposal envisages linking some parts of Thatta’s Khharo Chhan, Mirpur Sakro and Keti Bunder talukas with Karachi’s Port Qasim Town to create a new district. The Awami Awaz bemoans that ‘sustained efforts are being made to interfere with the political geography of Sindh’.

Major decisions like this, the paper argues, should be referred to the parliament rather than being left to the whim of the bureaucracy.

Frequent power outage and loadshedding continue to torment Sindh. Villages and small towns are the biggest sufferers.

Dailies Koshish, Tameer-i-Sindh and Awami Awaz have editorialised on the issue. The Tameer writes that although Wapda has announced loadshedding would last one hour only, recurring power outages totalling six to eight hours has become the norm.

The Kawish focuses on the tribal feuds in upper Sindh with exhaustive reports on the entire gamut of the malady afflicting the province. The newspaper says that despite the ban on jirgas decreed by the Sindh High Court, the provincial government has constituted a 14-member committee of tribal chiefs to resolve feuds in 11 districts. The papers laments that not only the government has failed to stop the feuds, but it was also seeking support of the jirga system to restore the writ of the state.

The Kawish questions the legitimacy of the Sindh government’s action and avers 'this might be part of an agenda to raise the sardars’ stature before the general election’.

The paper thinks that the government’s recourse to the jirga system betrays the state’s failure to establish the rule of law.

The Hilal-i-Pakistan, commenting on the situation developing in Bangladesh after the government’s move to exile two former premiers, draws a parallel with Pakistan. The paper advises the Bangladesh army not to indulge in politics and give up on its ideas to introduce ‘controlled democracy’ a la Pakistan.



© DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2007

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