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Underaged kid drivers playing hell on the road
They pay Rs. 150 fine and get away, say police
By Shanika Udawatte
Teenage and underaged drivers, especially students of Colombo's elite international schools, have become a major problem for Traffic Police who say parents should be held responsible for the traffic crimes of these juvenile delinquents.

Police statistics for the past 12 months show that underaged teenagers without licence were involved in more than 7,000 traffic offence cases in Colombo alone. According to Traffic Police Chief S. N. Wickremasinghe, it amounted to about three percent of the 1.3 million cases they detect every year.

One of the factors the police attribute for this high incidence of teenage traffic offences is the penalty for driving without licence is very mild: A fine of Rs. 150.
According to police, most of the underaged offenders are international school students who like to go to social functions and other events driving a vehicle.

Some teenagers are seen learning driving along the parliament road though the law says that even licensed instructors cannot train persons below the age of 18.
Some of the international schools have banned students driving vehicles into school, but they admit some students drive up to the school and hand over the vehicle to a driver when they come close to the school.

Recently, a 14-year-old student of an international school rammed his car into a tree at Rajakeeya Mawatha, injuring the driver who was accompanying him. The driver in his statement to the Cinnamon Gardens police said that the boy had asked the driver to hand him the car and he had to obey.

Police sources said that "L" boards had been used while the boy drove the car but they had been removed soon after the accident took place. R.I.T. Alles, principal of Gateway International, told The Sunday Times that his school did not permit students to bring in their vehicles to school, but said he could not restrict the activities of the students after school hours.

Lawrence Mclellan, principal of Oveseas International School, said that for security reasons they did not allow any vehicles into the school, and therefore usually the students are dropped by some one.

SSP Wickremasinghe says they hold parents responsible for allowing their underaged children to drive their vehicles and endanger the lives of not only their children but also pedestrians and other road users. "It is a serious problem, because they know if they are caught, the maximum fine will be Rs. 150," he said.

When we discussed this problem with the officials of the Department of Motor Traffic, they added a different dimension to the story. They said there were instances where underaged persons had obtained legitimate driving licences by producing forged birth certificates.

Colombo City Traffic OIC Sunil Pathiratne said that he felt the fine of Rs. 150 was not an adequate deterrence and called for tough new laws and heavy fines to minimise traffic offences.

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