How can we stop road rage before it claims more lives?
Aw a “morning newspaper” person, I am quite used to the “usual stories.” I refer to the ambiguous ones, those that refer to a road accident, but are unable to state exactly where it took place. They call the victims South Asian but are not quite clear as to which country they belong. Or they say that the victims were young people but fail to tell us if they were school students, college goers or 30-somethings.
I usually graze past these stories, occasionally with silent gratitude to the Almighty, for protecting my loved ones and me from such tragic mishaps.
Last month too, I read a similar story, extremely vague in the details that it gave. I was particularly peeved by it because, in all its ambiguity (“two young women one of whom might be a foreigner”), the death of one victim, and the critical condition of the other were confirmed facts.
Yet that did not stop the report from stating that the pedestrians were not crossing the road at the designated area. I even decided to call the news desk of the paper once I was done reading the paper, to ask why they saw the need to blame the victims, when those involved in the accident were already (near to) dead.
Unfortunately though, I never had time to do so. Half an hour through my reading routine, a phone call jolted me with the news that a dear relative’s 19-year-old had perished in a road accident last night. Critically injured to begin with, she had breathed her last a few hours later.
Both university students, the former still in her first year, Mariam and Mithi were hardly “young women.” They were students — ambitious and full of life, with dreams that were as shattered as were their bodies and lives in the horrific road accident.
Mariam’s parents live in Riyadh, and she was born and brought up there. The reason she was referred to as a “foreigner” in the news story was because she was here on a student visa, only to complete her degree at a university in Dubai.
I sat stunned, for all this while when I had read (as we all do) news stories of random people dying on the roads, that is all they had been to me: Random people. But here was a news story that I had criticized as a general reader when it had actually been too close for comfort.
I rushed out to condole with her distraught parents, and share the pain of all those who loved Mariam. How helpless we were as we tried to explain away this complete waste of a life so young, so precious to all of us, and especially to her family!
As the day wore out and funeral prayers set Mariam off for a place certainly better than this one, the relatives filed out to return home, all anxious to find solace somehow.
Most of us must have spent a restless night, tossing and turning as we prayed for the Almighty to grant the parents strength to come to terms with the loss of their first born.
I, for one, also said a little prayer for all the young people I know who drive to college, and those who walk to bus stops where their transport will arrive.
People cross roads all the time, and often not from the designated pedestrian crossings because one, they aren’t too many to begin with, and two, they are often a long walk away from where you can reach your destination. Should they be blamed then, for losing their limbs or lives just because they were crossing from a “non-designated” area?
How can we stop this road carnage before it ravages other lives interconnected with our own, I wondered.
Despite all the efforts that the traffic police department is keen on implementing in order to stop our roads from becoming killing fields, this is yet another reminder that nothing will work unless we instill in ourselves the responsibility that should be paramount the moment we sit behind the driving wheel of a car.
Road rage, inattention and over speeding really do kill. Those who are part of the news everyday because they have died in a road accident are somebody’s parents, siblings, spouse or children. We must work fast to control our urge to rush somewhere, get ahead of someone, or even drive beyond the speed limits just because the empty road is tempting. Someday, we might be at the receiving end of the consequence of such irresponsible driving — the face or name staring out of a newspaper might be a familiar one.
— This article is exclusive to Arab News.
