Sameer Rekhi
rekhi7sameer@gmail.com
As a young officer, I served on the Patnitop-Jawahar Tunnel stretch in 2000-01, a difficult mountain stretch of the time. The roads were narrow, weather-beaten and vulnerable to heavy rain, fog, snow and landslides. Yet traffic discipline was not an impossible dream. It was enforced – and therefore, it largely worked.
Lane driving was strictly monitored. Over-speeding, dangerous overtaking, lane jamming and overloading were treated not as minor violations but as potential threats to human life. Officers remained physically present on the road for long hours. No black-screened vehicles, wrong-side driving or reckless indiscipline was tolerated. Drivers feared consequences because regulation was visible, immediate and quite a deterrent.
Despite difficult terrain and limited infrastructure, traffic movement remained comparatively orderly.
Today, the irony is painful.
Roads are wider. Vehicles are technologically superior. Communication systems are far more advanced. Yet road behaviour has deteriorated into near-anarchy. Unruly, rowdy driving is assuming epidemic proportions.
Wrong-side driving has become routine. Triple riding, reckless overtaking and dangerous speeding occur openly, often in full public view. Black films continue despite regulations. Mobile phones – perhaps the deadliest modern distraction – are now practically extensions of the steering wheel. At traffic signals, drivers casually scroll through screens as if roads were private spaces, bought with the car itself.
More alarming than the violations themselves is their normalization. What once shocked society has now become everyday behaviour.
This collapse cannot be explained merely by rising traffic density. Vehicle numbers have increased across India. Yet several cities continue to demonstrate that discipline is possible when traffic regulation is serious, fearless and free from the pull of illegal gratification.
Take Chandigarh.
The same drivers from Jammu and Kashmir who weave recklessly through traffic here suddenly become disciplined there. Seat belts appear. Indicators begin functioning. Lane driving returns. Mobile phones sit quietly on dashboards.
Why?
Because in Chandigarh, traffic rules are treated as non-negotiable. The consequences otherwise are considerably graver. Policing is visible and publicly respected. Cameras function. Challans arrive. Authorities respond promptly. Violations are neither negotiated nor ignored.
This exposes an uncomfortable truth: our people are not incapable of discipline. The real problem is not merely the absence of fear of reprisal, but also a gradual erosion of civic responsibility and public restraint. A culture of impunity, often reinforced by political and official patronage, has weakened respect for both law and fellow citizens.
Chaotic and impatient driving is not only a policing failure; it is also a social and moral failure. Roads ultimately reflect the temperament of the society using them. Aggression, entitlement, selfishness and indifference to public safety cannot be corrected by challans alone.
Somewhere along the way, traffic policing in Jammu and Kashmir appears to have shifted from sustained road management to intermittent ceremonial activity. Presence on the ground has weakened even as violations have multiplied. Visible policing – the kind that shapes driver psychology in real time – has reduced sharply.
When overloaded vehicles pass unchecked, when wrong-side driving goes unpunished, when tinted vehicles continue despite regulations and when influence overrides law, citizens gradually conclude that rules are optional or negotiable. Once that mindset takes hold, disorder repeats itself daily.
There was a time when traffic personnel stood for hours in rain, snow and dust because they understood an important truth: roads are not self-regulating spaces. Left unattended, they quickly descend into aggression, impatience and selfishness. That is precisely what many roads today increasingly resemble.
Road safety is not merely about issuing fines. It requires both preventive and punitive action. Traffic management is an engineering exercise in itself, where bottlenecks, critical paths, funnels and encroachments must be anticipated and managed dynamically, moment to moment. The aim is to keep traffic flowing steadily, free from snarls, chaos and turbulence.
At the same time, traffic policing itself has become far more difficult than it was two decades ago. Vehicle density has exploded. Highway expansion projects, diversions, haphazard roadside construction and unstable road engineering in fragile mountain terrain have added new layers of complexity and danger. Wider roads without self-discipline and responsible driving often encourage higher speeds and more reckless behaviour.
The recurring accidents on the Doda-Kishtwar road are a grim reminder of this collapse. Reckless overtaking on blind curves, over-speeding, use of mobile phones while driving, drunken driving, overloading and unfit vehicles continue to claim lives with frightening regularity. Such stretches require sustained monitoring, especially on blind curves and historically fatal points where a moment’s negligence often becomes irreversible tragedy.
This changing environment demands better-equipped and better-trained traffic personnel. Modern traffic management is no longer merely about whistles and barricades. Officers today require specialized training in traffic engineering, highway risk assessment, accident prevention, emergency response, technological systems and mountain-road regulation under constantly changing conditions. The reality, however, is that institutional capacity has not evolved at the same pace as the roads, vehicles and violations themselves.
Technology alone cannot solve this crisis. Wider highways alone certainly cannot. Without disciplined driving, visible policing and civic cooperation, better infrastructure can easily translate into faster and deadlier chaos.
The answer lies in restoring credibility in traffic management and public conduct. Zero tolerance for wrong-side driving. Immediate action against dangerous modifications and black films. Strict checks on overloading. Visible highway patrols. Functional camera-backed monitoring. Consistent penalties insulated from discretion and influence.
Jammu and Kashmir had once demonstrated that disciplined traffic management was possible even under harsher infrastructural conditions. If it could be achieved on the treacherous Patnitop-Jawahar Tunnel stretch two decades ago, it can certainly be achieved today.
What is needed is not another slogan or awareness campaign, but renewed administrative will, civic responsibility and sustained action without fear or favour.
(The author is a Retired IPS officer. The views expressed are based on his personal experience, assessment and opinion)
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