Bilaspur: The high-speed four-lane National Highway cutting through villages in Himachal Pradesh has once again exposed a deadly truth — development without safety is a disaster waiting to happen.
On Tuesday here, an innocent girl was crushed to death by a speeding vehicle near a village in Bilaspur, triggering outrage and raising serious questions about the complete failure of the local administration and National Highway authorities.
The girl was hit while moving along the highway near the habitation. She was rushed to AIIMS Bilaspur, where doctors declared her brought dead. Police reached the spot, seized the vehicle involved and initiated an investigation.
But for the locals, the real culprit is not just the driver — it is a system that has abandoned people living along the highway.
The four-lane highway, designed for high-speed traffic, passes dangerously close to villages without basic safety infrastructure. There are no proper road signs, no speed limit warnings near habitations, no zebra crossings, no pedestrian underpasses, and no barricades.
Children, women and elderly residents are forced to cross or walk along a highway where vehicles race at highway speeds, unchecked and unmonitored.
Shockingly, there is no CCTV surveillance along critical village stretches. Speed cameras are missing. Enforcement is absent. Commuters routinely violate speed limits, knowing well that there is little fear of being caught.
Local residents say neither the district administration nor the National Highway Authority has ever conducted awareness drives to educate villagers on how to safely move around a high-speed corridor.
The question locals are asking is blunt and uncomfortable. Why are children compelled to walk on a national highway. Why were villages allowed to be sliced by a four-lane road without safety planning. Why did authorities wait for a child to die before even acknowledging the problem.
Residents allege that repeated representations to authorities have fallen on deaf ears. There has been no traffic calming near habitations. No rumble strips. No warning signage. No pedestrian crossings. No awareness campaigns. The highway has become a daily gamble with death for those who live alongside it.
The incident has sparked fresh demands for immediate corrective measures. Locals want strict speed limits near village settlements.
They want proper signage, zebra crossings, foot overbridges or underpasses, CCTV cameras, speed monitoring systems and regular traffic awareness programmes, especially for children and women.
This tragedy has laid bare a harsh reality. In the race to build fast highways, human lives have been reduced to collateral damage. The silence and inaction of the local administration, police enforcement agencies and National Highway authorities amount to collective negligence.
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