If Sindh had a love language, it might be honking. We switch lanes like we’re changing our minds, ignoring red lights as if they’re mere suggestions, yet somehow act surprised when the news reports another life lost on the road.
In Karachi alone, over 500 people were killed in traffic crashes in just the first seven months of 2025. That’s not a statistic — it’s a stadium slowly emptying out. Earlier this year, 89 citizens lost their lives in traffic accidents in just one month, many involving heavy vehicles that treat city roads like private racetracks.
Still, some drivers overtake on blind turns, convinced nothing could possibly go wrong.
Small acts of road violence have become so normalized that they barely feel violent anymore. Triple riding on a bike without helmets? A “cute family moment.” Parking on a zebra crossing? “Bas do minute ka kaam hai.” Holding a mobile in one hand while steering with the other, letting ego drive the car — that’s the real automatic mode.
The dark joke is that most of us genuinely believe we’re “good drivers.” However, the problem always seems to be the other guy.
Consider a recent highway incident. Two motorbikes, approaching from opposite directions, were both riding on the wrong side of the road. They thought it was a shortcut, just a faster way home.
Unfortunately, it ended in a head-on collision. Four victims lay on the tarmac.
The Highway Squad Hope ambulance from SIEHS–1122 responded within minutes. The crew stabilized the injured as best they could on the roadside and urgently transported two critical victims to GIMS Gambat, while bystanders had already shifted the other two. Once the scene was cleared, Hope returned to its top point, ready for the next call.
For the victims and their families, that response wasn’t just “service delivery.” It was the thin line between life, disability, and death.
And the cause? Not a freak storm, nor a mysterious mechanical failure. Simply two bikes, confidently riding in the wrong direction, as if the laws of physics also drove on “our side.”
We treat the wrong side of the road as a convenience. “U-turn bohat door hai,” so an entire lane becomes a potential head-on collision zone. One tiny act of “chalo, manage ho jayega” can turn into four crushed bodies and a 1122 ambulance racing to collect the pieces.
Studies from Sindh reveal a grim pattern: the majority of crash fatalities are young men in their most productive years, often between 15 and 49. Families don’t just lose a person — they lose income, a parent, a future plan.
Behind every “road accident” headline is someone who left home thinking they’d be back in time for chai. The car made it home. They didn’t.
Many of us think:
In reality, physics does not care about your vibe. Speed plus distraction plus bad roads is a terrible group project, and your body is the assignment that gets crushed at the end.
Google Maps can re-route around traffic jams, but not around a truck that didn’t see your bike.
Real road safety in Sindh doesn’t start with new policies; it begins with boring, unglamorous decisions: leaving five minutes earlier, stopping at red lights, slowing down near schools, wearing a helmet even on “short” trips, and refusing to let a sleepy driver take the wheel.
These actions aren’t heroic, and they’re rarely Instagrammable. Yet, they quietly ensure your family never has to identify you at a hospital.
And if, despite every precaution, something still goes wrong — that is when you let someone else be the hero. Call 1122, so trained emergency teams from SIEHS can reach you or anyone on the road who didn’t get a second chance to be careful.
Drive like you want to arrive, not trend.
