Road Traffic Accidents Viz-a-Viz Terrorism, Pakistan’s Perspective

Abstract

Today road traffic accidents are a global health concern. Injuries due to road traffic accidents are the eighth leading cause of death globally, and the leading cause of death for young people aged 15–29. Approximately, 1.24 million Road Traffic Fatalities (RTF) occur annually and another 20 to 50 million sustain nonfatal injuries as a result of Road Traffic Crashes (RTC). These injuries and deaths have an immeasurable impact on the families affected, whose lives are often changed irrevocably by these tragedies, and on the communities in which these people lived and worked. The cost of dealing with the consequences of these road traffic crashes runs to billions of dollars. On the other hand terrorism is considered as a major threat to society. During recent years, terrorism in Pakistan has become a major and highly destructive phenomenon. Terrorism is considered as a momentary calamity with a disastrous impact over a long period of time which claims lives, leaves people disabled, homeless and bankrupt. It is a disorderly occurrence, the pattern of which is unobservable. This study investigates the fatality rate caused by Terrorist Attacks and Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) in Pakistan. The data includes death rate and the number of occurrence of each incident for the time period of 12 years, i.e. from 2004 to 2015. Deaths caused by RTAs were revealed to have uniformity along the timeline whereas terrorism was shown to have very scattered data. The study concludes that although government considers terrorism as a critical issue and is trying its best to control it, it is difficult to eliminate terrorism due to complexity of the factors involved. On the other hand, the government is not serious in reducing road traffic injuries which is otherwise comparatively easy and the damages associated in terms of death toll and financial loss is too much. The paper is concluded with recommendations to curb RTAs and RTFs.