KARACHI, Oct 30: There is a need for undertaking concerted efforts to foster the spirit of road sense — something that is very much lacking in our country.

This was stated by the administrator of the Defence Housing Authority, Brig Asif Ghazali, while speaking as the chief guest at the Karavan Karachi-PSO Roadsense programme held on Wednesday at the PSO headquarters.

He said the idea of road sense was very important and stressed that this spirit should also be inculcated in the youngsters to mould them into good citizens.

Brig Ghazali said the process of teaching did not end at the classrooms.

He said an impression about any city was gathered from the traffic discipline on the roads, driving courtesy as well as pedestrians’ rights.

The DHA administrator said people lacked road sense in our society and when they headed for a certain destination, they did not keep in mind the travel time, which affected punctuality and resulted in traffic violations as well.

Brig Ghazali said no attention was paid to the rights of the pedestrians. There was also scarcity of footpaths in the city and adequate as well as convenient zebra-crossing facilities were also not available.

Later, he inaugurated an exhibition of posters made by the schoolchildren.

The deputy inspector-general of traffic police, Saud Mirza, spoke of the growing number of road accidents and said that in Karachi some 600 people died annually in road accidents.

He said the 50 to 60 per cent of the victims were the pedestrians and one-third of them were children.

Mirza said most of the accidents occurred owing to the lack of road sense and said that the road-sense programme played a key role in preventing traffic accidents.

He said 19 per cent of the victims were motorcyclists who often did not maintain lane discipline and did not wear helmets.

Mirza said the traffic police had conducted a number of workshops pertaining to road safety and some 4,000 schoolchildren had benefited from them.

He said that now training teams were being constituted so that more youngsters could benefit from these.

He also said that efforts were being made to include traffic guidelines in the school syllabus.

A PSO official, Jalil Tareen, also highlighted the significance of road safety and spoke of the initiatives undertaken by the PSO to help foster such a spirit.

The chairperson of the Heritage Wallay, Yasmin Lari, also spoke.—APP