Six people lost their lives while 20 sustained serious injuries after two passenger buses crashed into each other in Balochistan’s Kalat on Friday, state-owned Radio Pakistan reported.

According to Levies forces, two passenger buses — one traveling from Quetta to Karachi and the other vice versa — collided head-on, resulting in the deaths of at least six people and injuring others.

The injured and deceased were shifted to Kalat Hospital.

In 2021, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed that 5,608 people lost their lives in road accidents across Pakistan.

More specifically, an alarming increase in road accidents has been registered in cities such as Karachi where 500 people were killed while 4,879 were injured in 2024 due to a host of reasons ranging from reckless driving to construction activities, according to hospital data.

Rules restricting the movement of heavy vehicles were recently implemented in Karachi amid rising traffic accidents involving dumpers and tankers and protests over the deaths of citizens.

Last month, the Sindh government banned the entry of heavy vehicles into the city during the daytime, only allowing them to operate from 11pm to 6am.

The Sindh government has also made it mandatory for all heavy vehicles in Karachi to have a physical fitness certificate amid the rising number of traffic accidents involving dumper trucks.

Rights activists and members of civil society have said that the increasing number of fatal road accidents in the city and the poor state of traffic law enforcement are violations of human rights, which the state has failed to safeguard.