We share the grief with the parents of score of schoolchildren who died or got injured in a traffic accident on Wednesday in Jubail. This horrible accident underscores the fact that how dangerous the Kingdom’s roads have become. One cannot save his life with defensive driving as he is not aware of the danger coming his way from a reckless driver using the same road. Kingdom’s world-class highways and roads and vehicles in relatively good conditions should in fact be the reason for safety of commuters but lack of respect for traffic laws has led to all this mayhem on roads we see on daily basis. Use of mobiles, some time even for sending or reading SMS, has made the Kingdom’ roads one of the most dangerous in the world. Monitoring by traffic police, deployment of Saher cameras have failed to check the menace of speeding, lane changing and wrong side overtaking. Apparently it is an issue of mindset wherein bad traffic habits are now inherently in-built. There appears to be no solution to change the mindset, which is affecting families after families who have lost their near and dear ones in traffic accidents. Though I see no hope of improvement but at the same time wonder how come most of the Saudi road users start respecting the traffic laws when driving in Western countries. Perhaps law, its respect and its implementation go hand in hand. — Masood Khan, Jubail