It is disheartening to note that Nepal has witnessed an alarming rise in human casualties in traffic accidents. Some seven persons die in road accidents throughout the country each day. Bad condition of roads, rickety and overloaded vehicles, and over-speeding are some the major causes of road mishaps. An utter negligence on the part of drivers is equally responsible for such accidents. Dozens of people died in four vital road mishaps in the country in less than two months. According to a news report published in this daily the other day, some 14 passengers lost their lives in the latest road accident that occurred at Kopche George along the Baglung-Burtibang section of the Mid-Hill Pushpa Lal Highway in Badhigadh Rural Municipality-7 in Baglung district on Tuesday. The jeep skidded off the road and fell some 150 metres down. The passengers were on the way to Nishikhola Rural Municipality-2 in the same district to take part in their clan deity worship function. Earlier last week, more than one and a half dozen people had died in a passenger bus accident in Sandhikharka Municipality of Arghakhanchi district. The bus that was heading to Butwal from Sandhikharka veered off the road and fell about 250 metres below along the winding road at Narapani of Sandhikharka Municipality-6.

As per the statistics maintained by Nepal Police, the country recorded almost 49,000 road accidents and more than 11,000 people lost their lives in such accidents all over the country in the last five years. On top of that, almost 20,000 people sustained serious injuries in the road mishaps during the same period. Records show that a total of 2,004 persons lost their lives in in road accidents in the fiscal year 2014/15 while 2,541 died in 2017/18 and 2,070 in the first nine months of the fiscal year 2018/19. Experts usually blame the poorly designed roads for the increasing trend of road accidents in the country. However, drunk driving and indiscipline of the drivers are also rampant these days. Besides, lack of period maintenance of roads is another major factor leading to such mishaps. There is also a bad tendency among the contractors not to complete the road construction or maintenance projects on time.

The existing scenario of road mishaps indicates that travelling on Nepali roads is fraught with life-threatening predicaments. This also shows that all the efforts made so far to reduce road accidents have not produced the desired results. The authorities concerned must take this issue seriously and come up with some concrete plans to curb road accidents. Even foreign diplomatic missions based in Kathmandu as well as tourists have expressed their serious concern over the burgeoning road accidents in the country. At a time when we are celebrating the Visit Nepal Year 2020 (VNY 2020) as a national tourism campaign, we must take the much-needed measures to ensure that roads in Nepal are safe for travel. It is high time that the Department of Transport Management (DoTM) and the traffic police enhanced road safety measures. They should also go for newer technologies for monitoring the traffic rule violations across the country in order to curb the number of road accidents.