Road accidents resulting in loss or disabling of precious lives is a recurrent phenomenon in our State. There is hardly a month when we do not take up this subject in one or the other way in these columns. Yet despite lot of rhetoric being exuded by authorities at various levels, there seems no end to the road accidents especially along either the Highway or the arteries of the Highway. Who should be blamed for these fatalities is difficult to determine. The fact of the matter is that the pre-requisites for road safety in our country are comprehensively set forth in traffic rules books but these are least translated into practice on the ground. More than three lakhs of people in the country die every year in road accidents. Who is at fault is difficult to determine; may be maximum of fault lies with the drivers or the machines or the roads. But the reality is that those who are supposed to control traffic are responsible to a large extent.
Alarmed at the increasing number of fatalities resulting from road accidents, the Apex Court, which was hearing a PIL on road accidents constituted a committee called Supreme Court’s Committee on Road Safety in 2014 for making necessary recommendations to the States across the country in order to ensure road safety and check accidents, which were assuming alarming proportion. This Committee made several recommendations in the case of J&K State and forwarded it to the Government for implementation. State Transport Department was asked to submit a report to the Committee describing the status of implementation of its recommendations. The report submitted by the Transport Department does not reflect the true ground situation. The information which the Apex Court’s Committee has gathered from its sources is at variance with the report submitted by the Transport Department. The Committee has taken a serious note of the fact that the report it has received is not substantiated by ground reality. A number of very useful recommendations had been made and the Transport Department has paid scant attention to these. Actually in a meeting held with state officers, the Committee laid down no fewer than 16 measures to promote road safety in the State. These suggestions were in addition to what the Transport Department itself has been advised to do. The Committee held meetings with the concerned officers of all States including J&K to assess what measures were taken or could be taken in the direction. We have said the compliance report does not corroborate with the ground situation. Fore example, the committee recommended drawing up of a protocol for identification of black spots on a continuing basis. The Transport Department had done some exercise earlier on this subject and did some more after the receiving recommendations of the Committee. But it left the matter with just identification of black spots and did not do anything to remove these and ensure safety of the road. Likewise no CCTV cameras for detecting traffic violations have been installed so far and the Traffic Police doesn’t have its own CCTV cameras. Moreover, it has yet not started making use of Executive Police cameras for detecting traffic violations.
Enquiries conducted in traffic accidents often reveal that drivers were drunk and that was the reason they could not control the vehicle. The Committee had recommended that the traffic police should have alcometers to check drunken driving but they have not procured it so far. Liquor shops along the main roads and Highway had to be banned. This recommendation, too, has not been adhered to in strict sense of the term. A general complaint is that footpaths and pedestrian paths have been encroached upon by vendors and rehri walas. Despite repeated notices they have not cleared the encroachments.
The question is that the Transport Department is not serious about taking measures to make road traffic safe and secure. This is a question of protection of human rights also besides being the administrative issue. People have a right to demand from the Government all precautionary measures to make the road journey safe and secure. In case of not providing these measures, a case of violation of human rights can be framed. It is simply disgusting to note that the State Transport Department has not complied with the recommendations of the Committee and in this situation, the Supreme Court can crack the whip and that will create very embarrassing situation for the State besides imperilling the lives of people who travel along the National Highway and other connecting roads. Responsible functionaries of the Transport Department claim that they are going to implement the recommendations and some movement is already there. That is only a lame excuse. They make this claim only when they have been reprimanded by the Chairman of the Committee for Road Safety. We would suggest the State Road Transport Department to be responsive and not to play with the lives of passengers.
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