Again a tragic car accident happened. This time schoolgirls became victims of carelessness casting shadow over travel camps mostly involving pupils and university students. 

In the bus rollover on Friday night in southern Iran in which seven schoolgirls and a teacher lost their lives and some suffered life-long disabilities, this feeling of sorrow and grief was once again revived among people that as if there is no strong will among officials to prevent the occurrence of such heart-rending incidents. 

While in a like event in June 2016 nineteen soldiers were killed in a bus rollover, there was no justification for the recurrence of a similar incident 14 months later. 

Iran can boast that it has made considerable scientific and economic progresses, yet it lags far behind in certain areas, especially in safe motoring and protection of environment. A country can claim that it is on the road to progress that it sees a balanced development. It is regrettable that you have an 80 million population with the highest literacy rate in West Asia but have one of the highest road fatalities in the world. 

One can hardly find a person that one of his friends, acquaintances or family members have not fallen victim to road rage.

Police have succeeded to reduce the number of road fatalities despite a sharp rise in number of cars hitting the roads and streets across the country, but the pace is too slow.

So far the traffic rules have not been effective enough to reduce road fatalities. Training citizens about safe motoring in schools and TV programs is not getting enough attention. So far we have failed to train citizens that unsafe driving is equal to madness.

It is extremely expected that the loss of schoolgirls put a brake on unsafe motoring. No excuse is acceptable to leave the fate of travelers in drivers' hands who behave irresponsibly or are not psychologically fit for the job.

PA/MQ