ANOTHER terrible road crash has shocked everyone and brought us face to face with what we ignore at our own peril. This time the site of the early morning accident was Rahim Yar Khan. Initial reports blame overspeeding. Indeed, there are reports that the driver of one of the buses involved in the collision was warned that he was going too fast soon after he set off on a journey that proved to be the last one for many of his passengers. The combined death toll of the two buses was said to be somewhere between 24 and 30. Whatever the actual figure is, the fact remains that many lives were lost because of criminal negligence.

In fact, there is usually a pyramid of negligence behind public-transport road crashes. Although, pending an investigation, one cannot squarely blame the drivers of the ill-fated buses for Monday’s accident, in a majority of cases, those driving public-transport vehicles are found to have been speeding in their bid to make a quick profit. There is often a whole system to ensure that these buses keep going on the roads, veering in all directions in an intimidating manner. And while the general maintenance of these vehicles might have improved somewhat, a lot of work must still be done to establish the benchmark of what can be allowed in the name of competition. What is also sad is the speed with which such accidents are forgotten and buried under a pile of statistics, as well as overshadowed in the news cycle by other reports. Such accidents will only be taken seriously when there is a concerted effort to investigate them and follow up with measures to prevent their frequent recurrence. The tendency to close the case after blaming the drivers is dangerous. The factors behind the rashness that is a dominant feature of public transport, intra- and inter-city, must be exposed. A good start may be to identify transport companies frequently involved in road accidents.

Published in Dawn October 18th, 2016