Teen driving tragedy

Two senior secondary students were killed, and two others critically injured on Friday, after their speeding SUV crashed into a parked truck on the National Highway near Tengpora curve on Friday. The teenagers, fresh from their school event, were reportedly racing in two Thar SUVs when one driver lost control, hitting the truck and then  a divider. The impact, caught on CCTV, left two dead on the spot, while the third one is critical. The heartbreaking accident has triggered outrage over lax enforcement of traffic rules. At the same time, there is also anger towards the parents of these children who let them drive these vehicles as if they were toys. In doing this, they not only put the lives of their children at risk but also those of the other road users.  The speeding ill-fated SUV not only hit a truck but reportedly narrowly missed a passenger vehicle as it careened sideways.

In the unfortunate event any of these passengers or the passing vehicles had been harmed, who would be responsible for it?  If the parents don’t care about the safety of their own children, they can’t play with the lives of other people.  This calls for the traffic department to swing into action and stop the practice of underage driving. More than the minors who get keys to vehicles, sometimes as expensive as Thar, it is their parents who should be hauled up for their follies. While the law indeed holds the parents responsible, the severity of the punishment needs to be enhanced. They should have to suffer longer jail terms and higher fines.

That said, the state of traffic in Srinagar is getting messier by the day. Part due to incompetence of the traffic personnel and part due to a severe shortage of staff, the traffic department  has found the problem difficult to handle. Pathetically inadequate infrastructure is the other problem which is hampering the smooth flow of traffic: there is a yawning gap between the growing volume of the traffic and the required road length. And this gap looks impossible to bridge anytime soon. We need a far-going change in how we administer the traffic. And this will not happen unless the traffic department is adequately staffed and the violators of the traffic rules are held to account.