Killer Roads!

Tracy Brand/Gulf News ©

Two days back on Thursday, Dubai witnessed one of it's worst road accidents! A bus full of construction workers hit another bus, fell to it's side and smashed through the road divider and into oncoming traffic where another speeding mini bus rammed into it. With only the thin metal roof of the bus between the trapped workers and the oncoming minibus - it was a carnage.

Read the coverage by Gulf News in their story "Highway Horror."

Thursday's count

* Dead: 9 (one died in ICU)
* Injured: 56
* Serious: 8
* Medium: 19
* Light: 29
* No treatment needed: 12
* Total cases received at Rashid Hospital: 69 ~Source: Gulf News

Then on Friday in a near repetition, 11 people were injured when a bus carrying construction workers hit another vehicle. And in another incident on the same day a man was run over on Shaikh Zayed Road.

Shaikh Zayed Road already has the dubious distinction as Dubai's "Deadliest Road." According to the Gulf News reports based on interviews with RTA (Road and Transport Authority) officials, it was stated "the death toll of the first 10 months of this year, which on an average were one every 30 hours and one injury every two hours."

The Dubai Police has undertaken a crackdown on traffic offenders in Dubai and it is having positive results but the need of the hour is a self commitment from the drivers on these roads to drive safe.

As the year ends, the victims will be forgotten except in the hearts of silent grieving families. They will be mere numbers in statistics quoted to describe an ever increasing death toll. Will their blood be enough for Dubai's drivers to drive a little more safe or will they add their lives to this spiraling number of unknown victims?

Death on the roads have no valour, but preventable tragedy written all over it. ~Freemind