The numbers are grim, and they should unsettle every conscience in Jammu and Kashmir. In five years, 4,287 lives have been lost in road accidents across the Union Territory. Of these, 1,255 deaths occurred on National Highways alone — a stark reminder that the region’s fastest roads are also among its deadliest. When nearly a third of all fatalities are concentrated on highway stretches, the debate can no longer be reduced to routine statements about “road safety” and “human error”. This is not merely a statistics problem. It is a public safety failure. Roads are meant to connect people, markets and opportunities; in J&K, far too often, they are turning into corridors of tragedy. The toll is especially painful because it is concentrated among the young and the vulnerable. The fact that the 18 to 25 age group recorded the highest number of highway deaths between 2022 and 2025 should shock policymakers into action. These are not abstract numbers; they are sons, daughters, students, workers and breadwinners whose futures were cut short on roads that should have protected them. Even more disturbing is the heavy burden borne by pedestrians. With 1,011 deaths over five years, pedestrians account for nearly a fourth of the total fatalities. That means a dangerous road environment is harming not only drivers and passengers but also ordinary men and women walking to school, work, home, or a bus stop. The sharp rise in pedestrian deaths in 2025, whether due partly to improved eDAR reporting or not, still points to an unacceptably lethal road culture. The government is right to say that accidents arise from a mix of human, vehicular and infrastructural factors. But the emphasis must now shift from explanation to execution. Education, enforcement, engineering and emergency care are useful pillars, but they cannot remain a slogan. Road safety audits must identify black spots and dangerous design flaws in a time-bound manner. Highway authorities must ensure better signage, lane discipline, pedestrian crossings, lighting, crash barriers and speed management. Over speeding and reckless driving must invite consistent punishment, not occasional outrage. The law must be visible on the road, not just on paper. Equally important is the medical response. A road accident is often a race against time. If emergency care is delayed, a survivable injury can become fatal. The PM RAHAT scheme and the claims already initiated in J&K are welcome, but access to cashless treatment, trauma care and ambulance response must be widened and streamlined. A state that can count its dead so precisely must also build systems that save them with equal precision. The tragedy of J&K’s road deaths is that many are preventable. Every fatal crash should be treated not as an isolated event, but as evidence of a system that needs urgent repair. Until roads are made safer for pedestrians, stricter for violators and faster in emergency response, the death toll will continue to rise and with it, the public’s sense that this loss is becoming routine.
