ISLAMABAD: The National Highway and Motorway Police in collaboration with Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) organized an awareness session here at Chamber House on Wednesday to educate the business community on the importance of traffic rules compliance in order to avoid road accidents.
Addressing the business community, Tashfeen Nawaz, Senior Patrol Officer, National Highway and Motorway Police said that traffic accidents have taken more lives in Pakistan than the terrorism as the number of casualties occurred in traffic accidents was three times higher than the casualties in terrorism incidents.
He said this situation necessitated enhanced awareness in the public about the importance of traffic rules compliance in order to avoid the road accidents. He said with the efforts of Motorway Police, things were improving, but there was lot of scope for further improvement on this account.
He said annually, over 1.2 million people lost their lives due to road accidents while in Pakistan traffic accidents caused annual casualties of 14000 to 15000. He said according to a 2016 report, 3300 children died in front of schools due to accidents and stressed that parents should educate their children about the precautionary measures while crossing roads.
He said according to a research study, 90 percent accidents in Pakistan occurred due to the mistake of drivers while only 5 percent accidents occurred due to road condition and the rest 5 percent due to vehicles conditions.
He emphasized that people should fully comply with traffic rules that would help in minimizing the traffic accidents as death of one person affected the lives of whole family. He asked the business community to cooperate in spreading the awareness of traffic rules for educating maximum people.
Speaking at the occasion, Sheikh Amir Waheed, ICCI President, said that civilized nations developed disciplined driving by ensuring strict compliance of traffic rules and emphasized that there was a dire need to educate maximum people in Pakistan to promote disciplined driving in the country that would help in minimizing traffic accidents.
He said traffic rules should be made part of school curricula so that youth could be educated about the benefits of disciplined driving. He lauded the initiative of National Highway and Motorway Police for launching awareness campaign on traffic rules and added that this campaign should be spread throughout the country to promote disciplined traffic system in nation.