Expressing concern over the number of accidents taking place in the State, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Monday reportedly said that Goa has become the accident capital of the country. In several of the reasons like over-speeding, drunken driving, not following traffic rules, not wearing the helmet or seat-belt, reckless driving and the like, the driver/rider of the vehicle must be considered to be at fault. But it needs to be noted that accidents can be attributed to poor road conditions. This could be due to roads with pot-holes, bad road-engineering, poor street-lighting, non-functioning traffic signals, stray cattle on the roads, etc. for which the government is partly responsible. Many fatalities that take place due to road accidents could involve the lone bread earner in the family. The poor and aged parents may have no one to take care of their needs if their only bread-earner dies in a road accident. It would be in the fitness of things for the government to introduce a lifetime pension scheme for the old and poor parents who have lost their only bread earner in a road accident.
