Another life lost to a preventable crash in Poonch exposes the Valley’s dangerous roads, weak enforcement, and official apathy
Blood on our roads has become so routine that a fresh tragedy barely stirs the administration. On Tuesday morning, at Dhana Dohian Sathara in Poonch, a motorcycle skidded off the road and plunged into a deep gorge. One man lost his life. Two others were critically injured and rushed to the District Hospital in Poonch. All three are from Islamabad, Poonch. Police have “taken cognizance”, and further details are awaited. We have heard this line too many times. The question is not what happened or which motorcycle was involved. The question is why our hilly roads remain death traps year after year. Steep curves without crash barriers, narrow stretches without proper shoulders, broken surfaces, poor signage, and almost non-existent speed‑calming measures together turn every commute into a gamble. When such roads meet overloading, rash driving, and lax enforcement, the outcome is tragically predictable: bodies in gorges and headlines of grief. Behind every “accident report” stands a familiar pattern of official neglect. How many dangerous spots at Dhana Dohian Sathara or elsewhere in Poonch have been flagged by the concerned authorities? How many technical audits of these stretches have been carried out and made public? Where are the crash barriers and reflective warning signs that should be mandatory on such terrain? Announcements of road projects are aplenty, but a basic culture of road safety is missing. It is time authorities stop hiding behind routine FIRs and ritual press notes. The administration must order an immediate safety audit of vulnerable stretches in Poonch and other hilly districts, fix responsibility on engineers and contractors where design or maintenance lapses are found, and prioritise installation of guardrails, signage, and speed controls. Traffic police must back this with visible, sustained enforcement instead of sporadic drives for cameras. A society that accepts such deaths as fate abdicates its duty to the living. Any road accident deaths should not be filed away as another case number. It must become the trigger for a serious, time‑bound road safety plan in Jammu and Kashmir’s most perilous corridors. Otherwise, the next plunge into a gorge is only a matter of time, and we will once again be told that “cognizance has been taken”.
