Dying in Streets (by Narayan )

This must have been the most terrible of accidents at the very heart of Kathmandu. A speeding car hit, over ran and killed six pedestrians on the spot. Driven by a drunken college youth in the middle of the night, the car made a U-turn after hitting the ill-fated pedestrians and near by iron railings. The accident was merely caused by the uncontrollable speed. Taking advantage of the traffic-less road at the night time, the young boy, high on alcohol, threw caution to the wind and accelerated the car's speed so high that he could not keep control over the vehicle, leading to one of the most appalling accidents on the streets of the capital city. Several accidents occur in the streets of Kathmandu but Tuesday night's accident has effectively exposed the falling standard of our traffic safety system. Every passing day, people are dying untimely death because of failure in the effective control over the movement of vehicles in the inner parts of the city where pedestrians are always at the risk of being hit by some speeding cars, microbuses, nini trucks and motorcycles. The growth in the number of vehicles within the city has made the task of controlling traffic a headache for the traffic department. Within a view to put strong surveillance on erring vehicles and drivers, the department has few years ago installed modern Circuit Cameras (CC) system at many intersections of the major throughfares of the capital. Sadly, we have not heard any good news regarding the traffic departmen'ts success in arresting any drivers who have broken the traffic rules. Many accidents in Kathmandu occur during the night time due to drunken driving and high speed, but many of these Circuit Cameras which were installed to spy over the drivers who blatantly flout the rules, fail to spot even the colours or registration numbers of erring vehicles during the night time. Likewise the traffic department considers it unnecessary to depute on regular basis the traffic policemen during night time at several parts of Kathmandu.
The matter of making the crowded Kathmandu streets safe has gone from bad to worse by another factor : the rampant corruption in the distribution of driving licenses. The officials at the department responsible for issuing driving licenses have been providing licenses many unqualified drivers in return of some rupees. As the number of unqualified drivers takes to the steering wheels, commuting in the Kathmandu streets becomes fraught with mortal danger.
Other factors such as rise in shrinkage of existing streets, poor road conditions, failure in monitoring vehicles that play on the capital roads and failure in strict imposition of punishment to erring drivers have also led to many awafully unpleasant accidents in the streets of Kathmandu.
If we recount several road accidents and the failure of our authority in preventing them, we can say without doubt- dying in Kathmandu streets is easy. (Article by : Narayan Uppadhya, Source : The Rising Nepal)