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Get your act together to cut road toll, ministries urged
Last month a bus from Vavuniya skidded off the road and crashed into a transformer at Mahawewa junction in Marawila
A meeting of all ministerial stakeholders has been called next week in a bid to end years of uncoordinated road safety planning, as police investigate the crash of a bus full of young trainee teachers in which one person died and 40 others were injured.
The bus, carrying students and teachers from the National College of Education Addalaichenai, veered off the road in the Pahala Kadugannawa area in Mawanella, in the Kegalle District.
Eight people die daily, in the 150-odd accidents reported around the country, police say. Crashes of larger vehicles bring extra heartbreak as they involve many lives.
On February 5, a Colombo-bound bus from Vavuniya skidded off the road and crashed into a transformer at Mahawewa junction in Marawila in the Puttalam District, killing three people and injuring 19 others.
In July last year, 77 people were injured in an accident involving two private buses in Gokarella, Melsiripura, north of Kurunegala.
Last year, there were 2,465 bus accidents – most involving private buses – according to police. Fatalities ensued in 175 crashes of private buses and 52 buses of the Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) – statistics demonstrating that fatal accidents are 3.5 times more likely to happen when travelling in private buses.
Every year, the numbers keep rising – in 2017 there were 1,610 private bus accidents with 150 of them being fatal – and police said this was inevitable when the bus fleet kept increasing but the roads remained the same. Ignorance and flouting of road rules add to the toll.
More than 7.5 million vehicles plied the roads at the end of 2018, a 100 per cent increase in 10 years, according to the Registrar of Motor Vehicles.
60 people were injured in a bus collision in Gokarella
Strategies to reduce road accidents have not borne fruit because there is no co-ordination between the authorities involved, said Professor Samath Dharmaratne of the Medical Faculty of the University of Peradeniya, who carries out research on road accidents.
The Transport Ministry, Ministry of Highways and the Health Ministry should come together and design a programme to combat the problem, he said.
“In this country there is no co-ordination or discussion among the authorities and different ministries implement their own programmes. The end result is duplication,” Professor Dharmaratne said.
His passion to cut the road toll has propelled him to join hands with the Rotary Club of Sri Jayawardenapura and the Automobile Association to call on the government to create order on the roads.
A symposium to be held on March 21 at the BMICH will invite all stakeholder ministries to come together to work out measures to reduce accidents.
A concerted effort will be made to bring all ministry secretaries to the table in a taskforce under President Maithripala Sirisena.
One suggestion will be to capture bad driving on CCTV and award demerit points to the errant drivers, resulting in licences being suspended or cancelled if points accumulate. Bad drivers caught on CCTV will have fines posted to them – a strategy to prevent bribery and arguments with the police. “The on-the-spot fine system is giving them leverage to slip out of the net,” Prof Dharmaratne said.
Rotary Image Chair Kumar Kandanearachchi, a former co-ordinating secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Mahaweli, said there were also plans to identify and reward good drivers.
As a pilot project, Rotary will focus on areas of risk such as Gampaha and Nittambuwa, starting at divisional level. “Our aim is to reduce fatal accidents by at least 5 per cent by 2025 with the government’s support,” he said.
Lanka Private Bus Owners Association, President Gemunu Wijeratne said speeding was the main cause of all accidents with private buses not operating on a timetable.
“For the past three years we have been asking the authorities to introduce a timetable for private buses. So far, this has not happened,” he said.
Private bus associations also want a 24-hour bus lane so that buses cannot overtake and also do not stop and wait for passengers. “This also can reduce accidents,” Mr Wijeratne said.
He said that the government’s 2019 budget plan to introduce 250 SLTB buses and 1,000 luxury “city ride” buses will add to the chaos on the roads if proper measures are not implemented in time.