Every four hours, road accidents kill road users; more than 100 accidents are reported in the country daily, while the Colombo National Hospital alone admits at least 20 victims a day while other hospitals island wide receive a higher number.
These are some of the shocking statistics maintained by Police Headquarters.
The main reasons for accidents are speeding, reckless driving, negligence of pedestrians and driving under the influence of liquor. Driver fatigue and falling asleep at the wheel are other factors.
Last week the life of a 24-year-old girl ended on the roadside of Nelundeniya on the Kandy – Colombo main road after an overworked driver fell asleep at the wheel of a van and crashed into her. She was a boxer training to represent the country at a national level.
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| An accident that occurred in Maikkulama, Chilaw on Saturday evening.
Pic by Augustine Fernando |
“The driver had been in deep sleep with his head on the steering wheel. As a result the horn had been tooting continuously,” Dedigama Police station Officer In Charge, K.D.S.Balasuriya told the Sunday Times.
“An eyewitness to the accident said the lights of the vehicle were on and he saw it hitting a light post, before knocking down the girl and crashing into a wall before coming to a stop,” the OIC said.
“The van had proceeded about 60ft before it came to a halt. The driver cannot recall the accident,” he said.
The accident was a clear case where the driver had been working for more than 48 hours continuously with minimum sleep during the period.
Similar accidents due to driver-fatigue were also reported recently in the Puttalam area. One of them involved two lorries where the driver of one had been driving through the night from Pulmoddai in the Trincomalee district right across the country to the Puttalam district in the north west. The other involved a lorry and a bus where the driver heading from Colombo to Jaffna had fallen a asleep and crashed into the lorry.
Last year 2, 515 were killed in road accidents while this year so far 1,102 have been killed, according to Police statistics.
For the past six months alone 3,016 serious accidents have been reported while for the whole of last year 5,529 such accidents were reported, police said.
A senior police officer said that the number of accidents involving motorcycle riders too were also high, particularly in cases where riders did not wear helmets or rode with unfastened helmets. “Some of them have the helmets unfastened so that they can insert their mobile phones and talk while riding, thereby losing concentration,” an officer said. He said with more highways coming up and better road infrastructure, people tended to speed more.
The increase in the number of vehicles on the roads also contributes to the rise in the number of accidents. By end of last year, there were 2.1 million motorcycles, 529,543 three wheelers, 410,282 motor cars among a total number of 3.9 million registered vehicles in the country.
Most of the fatal accidents involved motor cycles accounting to 28 per cent, 16 per cent state run buses and 13 per cent private buses (See graphic for details).
Last year of the total number of 2, 515 fatal accidents 722 involved motor cycles, 372 lorries, 314 private buses, and 227 three-wheelers.
As a move to minimize accidents the Police and National Road Safety Council has initiated some programmes its chairman Manoda Wijeratne said.
Commenting on the government’s concern over the increase in the number of accidents Mr. Wijeratne said, “Two years ago it was the war that killed the people in the country- It claimed the lives of innocent people, soldiers, and LTTE cadres. Whoever died, they were still people of the country. The war is now over. Now the biggest killers are road accidents.”
He also said the government spent over Rs. 6,000 million a year to treat victims of traffic accidents. “This is a burden on the tax payer,” he said.
He said, among the proposals made to reduce the number of accidents, the WHO has announced a road-safety decade and Sri Lanka too would ensure that it is implemented.
Mr. Wijeratne said that UN standards set by donor countries will also be strictly adhered to when roads are built.
“Among some of the conditions insisted by donor countries when funding road constructions include that specified number of lanes are made according to the width of the road, cycle and pedestrian lanes are introduced,” he said.
State vehicle insurance a must
State vehicles will have to be insured in future when amendments to the existing laws are made in Parliament.
A circular has already been issued to ensure that state-run buses are insured, National Road Safety Council chairman Manodha Wijeratne said.
He said the decision was taken because families of victims of accidents involving state-run vehicles are forced to wait for a long period of time to receive compensation.
He said currently the Insurance industry is required to make a contribution to a fund to pay compensation for hit and run victims and this fund is made use of to pay other victims as well. He said the industry contributes about Rs. six million a month to this fund. |
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