Murali Dhar Pokhrel:

Ensuring road safety has become an important national problem in Nepal. Yet very little has been done about it. We have data on road accidents each year, but we need to analyse accidents in much more detail to find out the major causes of these accidents.

No doubt, operating poor-condition buses causes accidents. But licences to operate such buses are issued without giving due consideration to the managerial and operating capabilities of the owners. It is left to the whims of the officials to ensure that the buses being operated in the roads and highways are in sound condition. If the Department of Transport Management could pass a law that makes it mandatory for a public-transport bus to have an up-to-date insurance policy in order to get permission to ply in the roads, more than 50 per cent of the accidents could be avoided.

There are various kinds of insurance policies available, but emphasis needs to be given to a comprehensive insurance policy that replaces the vehicle if it suffers total damage. This policy should be made compulsory for every public-transport bus, especially those that carry passengers along the long routes. In addition, other measures should be considered. The first insurance policy will put the responsibility of ensuring the operating condition of the bus on the insurance company. Insurance companies generally have the policy of granting insurance only to those buses that are in a reasonably good condition. This will provide an effective way for the authorities to weed out old buses.

The other type of insurance policy should also be made mandatory, and in case the owners of buses do not want to comply with this rule, the Transport Department should take measures to differentiate between those buses that have and those that do not have a proper insurance policy. One way to do this is by providing differently coloured licence number plates. Bus accidents are fatal when they occur in hilly and mountainous regions. Hence special policies need to be fashioned to make our transportation system safer and more reliable. It is unfortunate that in these regions the buses are run by small-scale operators who seek to maximise profit, and are not motivated to make any investments needed to provide safety. The licence to operate passenger buses should never be provided to an individual, but only to private or public companies that have minimum five to ten buses.

In Nepal, the traffic rules are the same for both the ordinary roads and the highways. No wonder, the road that was planned originally as a highway degenerates within a few years into a congested roadway, which is no different from the ordinary city street road. Ring Road, for example, was originally built as a highway, but now due to construction along its side, it has degenerated into a rough road. Authorities should enact a law to prohibit building houses that have windows or doors or shutters facing the highways. The way to build settlements along the highways is to build houses that face the roadways that are built at right angles to the highway. Only then can we hand over a well-functioning highway to our posterity, and this has the additional advantage of reducing traffic congestion and accidents in the highways.