PESHAWAR: At least 17 people were killed and 34 sustained critical injuries when a passenger bus rammed into an oil tanker on the Indus Highway near Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Saturday. According to the district police officer (DPO) Sohail Khalid, the bus was on its way to Karachi from Buner when it collided with the tanker, which was travelling on the opposite direction towards Peshawar. Both vehicles turned turtle due to the massive impact of collision. Reportedly, the dwellers of the area, the Rescue 1122 teams in Kohat and the police officers rushed to the spot and began rescue operation. The deceased’s bodies and injured were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital Kohat for medical attention, and according to hospital officials many of the injured, in critical state, were moved to Peshawar for treatment. Meanwhile, the rescue officials sought Pakistan Army’s help in the rescue operation, and clear the site of accident from debris of oil tanker and bus. The recover team used a crane to pull out two bodies trapped under the tanker. The police officers attributed the tragedy to speeding; however, a probe has been launched into the incident to determine the actual cause of fatal crash. The Indus Highway reportedly poses a fair amount of danger to vehicles owing to the fact that a large section of the highway, especially from Kohat to Dera Ismail Khan, has no division in place to force vehicles to remain in their respective lanes. Resultantly, going and oncoming traffic has been susceptible to collisions. Poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving are cited as common reasons behind accidents in Pakistan. About 9,000 road accidents are reported to the police since 2011, claiming the lives of more than 4,500 people on annual average, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Road safety expert, Mohammad Shahid, while speaking to the participants of Disaster Management Exhibition and Conference held in 2015 had said that traffic accidents are the leading cause of deaths among people aged between 15 and 29 in the country. “The main reasons for road accidents include poor vehicle conditions, ignoring traffic rules and instruction marks on roads, signal breaking as well as speeding, doing wheelies, use of mobile phones while driving, wrong overtaking, use of drugs, wrong parking, overloading and bad road conditions,” he said in 2015, adding that 80 percent people were found to be not following safety precautions including fastening seat-belts or wearing helmets. Published in Daily Times, August 5th 2018.