Carnage on the road

More than 20 people have been killed in road accidents in various parts of the country over the past two weeks, 16 of them in only three incidents.

The most recent of these took place last week in Yadoudeh, south of Amman, resulting in the death of two policeman and three inmates whose van collided with a speeding truck. 

The week before six perished in a road accident in Azraq, the eastern desert, and five young men were killed in a collision near Qatraneh, in Karak Governorate.

Sadly enough, these accidents, along with many others, could have easily been avoided.

Accidents in Jordan are mostly blamed on reckless driving in addition to other factors that include the poor condition of some roads, lack of law enforcement, mechanical problems, weather conditions or the use of cell phones while driving.

The main cause of the Yadoudeh accident, as a video posted on YouTube shows, was a pickup truck that parked on the side of a main road, blocking the path of vehicles making a U-turn from the other side. Blocked traffic at that part of the road caused a speeding lorry truck to jump the divider to the opposite side of the road, slamming into several vehicles, including one that was transporting inmates and officers from a correctional facility to nearby courts.

The pickup truck driver then drove off as if nothing had happened, maybe unaware that his simple act of parking on the side of the road led to a tragedy. The lorry driver, who was surprised by the blocked traffic, should have been paying more attention to the road ahead, and certainly should have been driving at a reasonable speed.

Police officials attributed the Qatraneh incident, involving a trailer truck and a sedan car, to road construction and wrongful overtaking. In that particular area, traffic was merged from four lanes to two because of construction, leading the driver of one of the vehicles involved in the incident to overtake a queue of cars, a big miscalculation that resulted in the death of all five occupants of the sedan, which local media images showed as a crumpled piece of foil. The death toll could have been reduced if this vehicle had proper safety equipment and devices, including metal bars and airbags. Unfortunately, Jordan imports many cars that lack safety measures, several of them second-hand cars from other countries.

The Azraq accident involved a Saudi-registered vehicle and a Jordanian pickup truck and was blamed by officials on speeding and wrong overtaking on the part of the Saudi driver.

These accidents and many others point to a chronic problem that Jordanian roads are suffering from: defiance of the law and public safety measures on the part of motorists, and lack of enforcement and monitoring on the part of the authorities. Of course, the culprits here are the prevailing mentality and the attitude of motorists, which can be changed gradually by reasonable and serious law enforcement campaigns, coupled with proper legislation and education for all, including schoolchildren.

The process of fighting road accidents is a long-term endeavour that should start now, not later.