Remains of the 27 passengers a Karachi-to-Panjgur bus burnt in an accident on Monday have been buried. As DNA tests of samples collected from the accident site for the identification of every single body would have taken more than a week, the affected families agreed not to pursue the process and went for instant burial. One can understand the trauma the families have suffered in the wake of the deadly crash. The quarters concerned should also feel the pain of the families and come up with measures to make our roads secure. Treacherous roads have been killing passengers and pedestrians without any discrimination for years, thanks to the blatant violations of traffic rules. The Monday crash, however, must be investigated thoroughly to find the source of the fire following the collision between the passenger bus and the tanker parked on the roadside. The educated guess made by the authorities concerned so far suggests that either the fuel tank of the bus caught fire or the oil-tanker carrying the smuggled Iranian oil fuelled the fire. Some media reports suggest that the bus was carrying illegal oil. In either case, it was the presence of the oil that left the passengers with little time to leave the bus, inflicting life-threatening injuries and minimising their chances of survival. Had there been no fire, the causality chart would have a fewer number. A visible action has yet to be seen by our law-enforcement agencies against the transportation of smuggled oil on buses on Quetta-Karachi-Quetta section. Both sides – transport owners and the law-enforcers – have been thriving on the cheap oil. Poor passengers, well knowingly that that they are to get on a ticking fire bomb, have to travel on these buses for the lack of options. The other culprit in the recent crash – oil tanker – also runs wild on roads multiplying the risks because of the lack of enforcement of safety procedures. Oil tankers loaded with thousands of litres of petrol are brought to the roads without property safety inspections, endangering the lives of others on the roads. Not long ago, a roadside crop field became a killing field in Ahmedpur East when an oil tanker overturned and people started collecting the oil spilled in the field. Flammable cargoes on vehicles met 70 accidents from March 2017 to March 2018, and these crashes could have been averted by following safety and security criteria and quality assurance of vehicles. Let the oil marketing company take action against the oil tanker parked so unsafely along the road. Let road authorities take action against the bus operator for flouting the rules. Let the government take the road safety a priority. The problem is that the government, soon after mass deaths in a major road crash, comes up with monetary handouts to pacify the heirs and conveniently ignores underlying issues. Apart from other stakeholders, the public at large will have to adopt the culture of safe travelling, which is possible through following traffic rules. Why our roads are full of untrained, underage reckless drivers, who take pleasure in breaking laws? Jaywalkers also contribute to accidental deaths. Pedestrian bridges on roads are used very seldom, thanks to the popular trend of crossing the road while signalling the vehicles running on high speed to slow and stop in the middle of the road. In case of an accident, the crowd at the crash scene dubs jaywalkers a victim, and the motorist an offender. In fact, every road death is a murder, and the law must find who is the offender – jaywalking, rash driving, pothole-infested road or government’s disinterest in road deaths? * Published in Daily Times, January 24th 2019.