According to the World Health Organization (WHO), underdeveloped countries suffer from a higher frequency of road accidents and Pakistan in no exception -- it is on number 10 for the highest rate of road accidents.

WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015 points out that Pakistan received a score of 2 out of 10 for ensuring that motorcyclists wear helmets and it only did slightly better in enforcing that drivers wear seatbelts; only 10 per cent of motorcyclists wear helmets across the country. The report says that since 2005 road accidents in Pakistan have risen in frequency and fatalities.

According to a research conducted by Aga Khan University students, published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, out of all traffic accidents, the highest proportion (over 60 per cent) of injuries and death are faced by cyclists, motorbike and scooter riders. A major cause behind these injuries and deaths is that those on two-wheelers without helmets are most vulnerable.

The unprecedented number of motorcycles being added to the major metropolises like Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad has become a virtual menace for everybody using the roads. The motorcyclists are known to violate traffic signals and break all rules while zigzagging their way on the roads, including not wearing helmets and seating as many as five or more people on one bike while the traffic police seems utterly helpless.

In private conversations, government servants admit that motorcycles are the engines of economy and that they have enabled people, in both rural and urban settings, to break the cycle of poverty. It is ironic how unmoved the governments are to devise road safety rules and make these engines of economy safe and less vulnerable.

Last summer, there was a great uproar in Karachi when the city’s traffic police clamped down not just on motorcyclists who were riding without helmets, but also on pillion riders without helmets. Strangely enough, when female pillion riders complained about not wanting to wear a helmet, they were allowed to ride without the safety precautions.

A year since the law was heavily enforced, one can still see more helmet-less motorcyclists in Karachi than those with helmets.

Traffic wardens across Lahore say that, out of every 15 motorcyclists they wave down for violating Section 89-A of the Motor Vehicle Ordinance, 1965 -- which makes it illegal for any "person [to] drive, or ride the pillion seat of, a two-wheeled motor vehicle except when he is wearing a crash helmet" -- they fine a maximum of two.

Traffic Warden Adnan Haider says a major factor for not charging motorcyclists for violating 89-A is because they haven’t been instructed to "take such drastic measures". "Often the motorcyclist creates a scene and pleads so much that the officers have no choice but to let them go," he says.

Nisar Ahmed, a Traffic Warden in Lahore for four years, says that a few months ago, when they did start imposing fines on motorcyclists for not wearing helmets, "the media reported the traffic department has collected over Rs510 million in 2015. Such headlines only served to dilute the directives we had briefly received".

Some motorcyclists agree. "Sometimes it appears that such laws and fines are only made for poor people like us. I never see a big car being stopped and fined," says Anjum Ali, a plumber who rides from one client’s house to the next, all day.

It is interesting to note that while the traffic wardens in Lahore have been unable to facilitate enforcement of Section 89-A, they have in a matter of literally a few weeks ensured the successful enforcement of Section 89-B -- the law that ensures that anyone driving a car must wear a seatbelt.

The success of the seatbelt campaign makes it apparent that if the government has the will, it can implement a law. It also shows the traffic wardens are not incompetent; the problem lies in the kind of directives they are issued. Or, as Sub Inspector/Traffic Warden, Taher Aslam, likes to believe, "the difference is that those driving cars are educated while those driving bikes are illiterate. The reason why the City Traffic Police (CTP) has been unable to enforce 89-A is because the caliber and mindset of those driving bikes is not fit to understand road safety."

Fortunately, some wardens off the field appear less biased about the intellect of people riding motorcycles. Nazia Baqir, a Traffic Warden who heads the Education Unit of the CTP, posits another reason why the force is unable to ensure helmet safety for motorcyclists. "When we were being trained, our trainers repeatedly told us that instead of fining motorcyclists, we should reprimand them and explain the dangers of pillion riding and riding without helmets to them," says Baqir.

Baqir’s Education Unit is one that makes the CTP very proud. Sub-Inspector Aslam explains that one of the reasons the seatbelt law was successfully enforced in Lahore within a matter of months was because of the undying efforts of the Education Unit. "They went to schools, colleges, universities and taught students about the importance of safety," he says. "Furthermore, they would stand at traffic signals and stop cars and educate them and they also created and distributed educational pamphlets for the entire city."

Muhammad Shehzad works under Baqir in the Education Unit, along with a mere 10 others. It is this group of 11 people that were expected to educate all of Lahore about seatbelt safety, and now about helmet safety.

"The reason bikes are more difficult to monitor is because their numbers far exceed those of cars," says Shehzad. "There are certain motorcycle manufacturing factories in Lahore that claim to sell 10,000 bikes a day."

Shehzad’s claims are supported by the Pew Research Center’s 2015 survey which states that while only three per cent of Pakistanis have cars in their houses, a whopping 43 per cent claim to have motorbikes.

With at least over half a million motorcycles in Lahore, and 11 people employed to educate the motorcyclists, the situation does not seem promising. But Tasleem Shuja, the National Safety Manager for Honda who works with the Education Unit and the CTP on implementing and enforcing security for motor vehicles, disagrees. "It’s all possible. If we managed enforcing seatbelts, we can enforce this as well."

Shuja cites the major reason the seatbelt law was successful was because the directives from Chief Traffic Officer (CTO), Tayyab Hafeez Cheema, left no room for confusion. When the seat belt campaign was launched, the wardens were all told to fine violators, ignoring any excuses they may offer. "We expect similar strict directives from CTO Cheema very soon; he is possibly waiting for Ramzan to end before he launches this drive."

The wardens, as well as motorcyclists themselves, agree that fines may be the best, and perhaps the only option. "I don’t wear a helmet while riding because it’s inconvenient to carry around, but if they began fining me of course I would have no choice but to wear one," says Zeeshan Haider, a shopkeeper in Model Town, who rides 40 minutes to and from work on a daily basis.

"Educating and reprimanding them is all well and good," says Traffic Warden Ahmed, "but until they pay a fine, and possibly a fine heavier than the Rs300 imposed right now, their habits won’t change." The fine was set at Rs200 in 1965 and raised to Rs300 in 2014, but many believe the increase in the amount is not proportionate to the inflation in the rest of the country.

All said, traffic police do play a very important role in ensuring road safety. The fact, however, is their numbers are simply not enough to be able to deal with the task at hand.

Take Karachi for instance: the city has 3,200 traffic policemen to regulate 3.79 million vehicles. It should be noted that while the number of vehicles in Karachi rises by 900 every day, the number of traffic policemen remains stagnant. Hence, when we learn that the city experiences over 30,000 accidents every year, it is difficult to feign surprise.

While it is vital that the public be taught about road safety, it is equally important that the average traffic policeman on the street is empowered by the higher bureaucracy in the traffic department to enforce rules.

From a policy standpoint, Pakistan is not just failing to ensure safety on the roads today, but also for the future. According to WHO’s Global Status Report on Road Safety 2015, the country does not have integrated death registration data for traffic accidents. This means that nobody is keeping track of the trends and projections of traffic accidents at a national level. The same report also points out that before we can begin strategising how to reduce fatalities due to traffic accidents, there needs to be a national consensus on a fatality reduction target -- as of yet, no governmental department has even come up with a target.

Traffic accidents, especially those concerning motorbikes and bicycles, are not a Pakistan-centric problem. In 2013, within a two-week period, six cyclists lost their lives after colliding with other vehicles on the streets of London. Other cyclists in the city, more than a 1,000 of them to be exact, responded to these six deaths by staging a ‘die-in’ protest outside Transport for London’s headquarters in Southwark. The government responded to the tragedies and the subsequent protests by launching Operation Safeway, a major road safety operation, following which hundreds of police officers were deployed at key junctions across London, especially during rush hours, in order to efficiently regulate traffic.

Perhaps, it will be a while before we can expect Pakistan’s civil society to come out on the streets in support of better traffic regulations.