56% Car Owners in Pakistan Drive Carefully

The issues related to the road safety in Pakistan are a serious problem, specially for the residents of the metropolitans like Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore where people are unaware of the civic sense and do not have proper guidance on this issue making driving and road crossing terribly dangerous. It is revealed during a recent survey, conducted by the Gallup Pakistan that only 56% car owners in Pakistan claim that they always drive carefully.

The recent survey was carried out among a sample of 2774 men and women in rural and urban areas of all four provinces of the country, during April 2011.

In the survey, a nationally representative sample of men and women from across the country who said they owned cars were asked the following question, “How often do you drive carefully?”

Results show that 56% of the car owning respondents said they always drive carefully while 33% said they do so sometimes, 6% they never drive carefully and another 5% did not know or did not respond.

Interestingly, the results reveal that younger respondents claimed to be more careful while driving as compared to older respondents; where 70% respondents under 30 years of age said they always drive carefully; only 48% of those above 50 years gave this response. On the other hand, while 23% of those fewer than 30 years of age said they drive carefully only sometimes, as many as 44% respondents above 50 years gave this response. Among these careful drivers, 69% say that they are most cautious about staying within the speed limit and maintaining a safe distance with other vehicles.

According to the survey the carelessness during the driving is the major cause along with some other reasons like, untrained drivers (i.e. those without knowledge of road signs), mal-functioning of traffic lights and impatient drivers.

It is the need of the time that government and the civil society should play their crucial role for betterment in this state of affairs and to educate the drivers and the pedestrians also for saving not only their but others lives also.