Three lives were cut short, and three more were left injured in a single moment of loss of control on the Jalandhar-Pathankot National Highway on Sunday. The crash near Cholang Toll Plaza, involving a Fronx car moving from Jalandhar towards Pathankot, is yet another grim reminder that our roads continue to exact a terrible price, often from errors that should never turn fatal. The dead, including two residents of Batamaloo in Srinagar, have been identified as Sukhwinder Singh, Ikhlaq Qadir and Aneek Amin. For their families, this is not a statistic or a passing headline. It is an abrupt, unbearable rupture. A routine journey, a roadside vendor standing beside his cart, a vehicle that allegedly lost control — and within seconds, lives were forever altered. Such tragedies reveal how fragile safety remains on our highways, where one lapse can become irreversible loss. It is tempting, after every accident, to settle for sympathy alone. But sympathy is not enough. The first duty of the state is to ensure that highways are designed, regulated and monitored with seriousness. The second is to enforce traffic discipline without exception. The third is to make drivers answerable for speed, fatigue, distraction and reckless behaviour. When police say the cause is being investigated, the public must demand more than a routine formality. Was the vehicle speeding? Was the driver tired? Was there a mechanical fault? Was the stretch of road properly marked and maintained? These are not secondary questions; they are the very questions that determine whether such deaths are prevented tomorrow. The accident also exposes a wider truth about our road culture. We continue to treat highway travel as an everyday inconvenience rather than a matter of life and death. Overspeeding, poor lane discipline, careless overtaking and weak enforcement have normalised danger. Commercial traffic, private vehicles and vulnerable roadside workers all share the same space, but not the same protection. The vendor who was struck beside his cart is a tragic symbol of how exposed ordinary people remain to fast-moving traffic with little safety buffer. There is also a moral dimension to this disaster. A road is not just a stretch of asphalt; it is a public space where responsibility must be shared by drivers, transport authorities, police and policymakers alike. Every fatal crash that follows familiar patterns should compel a review of road engineering, signage, patrol presence and emergency response. It is not enough to arrive after the collision. The real test is whether the system can stop the collision from happening. The grief of the bereaved families in Srinagar and elsewhere should shake us out of complacency. Three killed and three injured is not a routine incident to be filed away. It is an indictment of a road system that still permits preventable deaths with disturbing regularity. Unless accountability becomes stricter and road safety becomes a political priority, the same sorrow will return, wearing a different name and a different date.
