Daily Times

After a reckless driver hit a donkey cart, a mob of inflamed motorcyclists quickly cornered his four-wheeler to avenge the accident. Fortunately, he had fled the scene before they could inflict any damage, so they decided to set his car on fire instead. Let’s get one thing straight-no one should be driving in a way that has the potential to hurt other vehicles, a phenomenon that we see far too often in Pakistan in the absence of traffic law enforcement.

In a country where donkey carts, cargo trucks, motorcycles and four-wheelers all drive down the same roads, exercising caution is simply the bare minimum. But mob violence isn’t the answer either-it achieves nothing constructive. Seconds after the car was set ablaze, police suspended oncoming traffic for a whole hour which is an arguably worse outcome than the accident that catalysed this whole situation in the first place. It is not the public’s responsibility to punish reckless drivers. Where were the traffic wardens when the driver rammed his vehicle into a donkey cart? Thousands of people encounter deadly situations on the road daily, but law enforcement institutions continue to neglect our roads, preferring to let their citizens handle things themselves.

Even if the driver was caught speeding, it appears that traffic violation tickets in this country haven’t been updated for decades-850rs is barely a fine at all for a crime that has the potential to kill other people. Let’s not forget that there are no tickets for not wearing seatbelts, reckless driving and other minor offences because the police simply don’t care to investigate the drivers. Narrow roads and single carriageways only complicate the issue especially when we factor in the sheer diversity of traffic in Pakistan. To put things in perspective, more people have lost their lives in road accidents than in terrorism or even the coronavirus pandemic. Unless we treat traffic accidents as a public health epidemic, we have no chance of minimising the casualties they inflict. It’s not surprising that people take things into their own hands when the state is so unwilling to accommodate their needs. *