Chilling stats and inaction

Friday 19th February, 2021

Police Spokesman DIG Ajith Rohana has alerted the public to an alarming increase in killer road accidents recently. During the past seven days, as many as 23 people have died in road mishaps, he says. Prangs, near misses and the attendant chaos on roads have become the order of the day, again. This may be taken as an indication that the country has returned to normal earlier than expected. During the pandemic-related lockdowns and travel restrictions, there was a sharp drop in road fatalities, which began to increase gradually as the country limped back to normalcy.

Road accidents snuff out more lives than coronavirus does in this country. Deaths due to road mishaps average eight a day. Not even the war destroyed lives at this rate. The National Council for Road Safety has revealed that 2,641 fatal road accidents caused as many as 2,829 deaths in 2019, when 10,691 mishaps occurred. There were 776 pedestrians, 1,162 motorcyclists, 282 drivers, 405 passengers and 204 cyclists and 10 others among the victims. There is a war of sorts against the runaway virus, which must be stopped, but there has been no such national effort to prevent road accidents. Why?

What action have the police taken to minimise road accidents and fatalities. The practice of revealing chilling statistics, from time to time, will not help prevent such tragedies however necessary it may be to raise public awareness. Hiru TV yesterday highlighted the danger motorists and pedestrians are exposed to at Rilawala, Kahatuduwa on the Colombo-Horana road. More than ten accidents happen at this busy intersection a month, according to witnesses, but the police have not done anything to make the place safe for motorists and pedestrians. All it takes to prevent such mishaps is to install signal lights or deploy traffic policemen there. Neither the traffic police nor the Road Development Authority nor the Pradeshiya Sabha concerned nor any other state institution seems to care.

The traffic police are maintained with public funds to make roads safe. They have to prevent road mishaps and ease traffic congestion. Instead, they patiently wait on the roadside until traffic laws are violated so that they can fine errant motorists. At some intersections in the city, there are posses of policemen hiding behind wayside lampposts and trees to nab those who drive through a red light, endangering their lives as well as others’. The presence of a single policeman is sufficient to ensure the safety of road users at some junctions, provided it is made conspicuous so that it will have a deterrent effect on reckless motorists.

Many newly carpeted roads in suburban areas are without sidewalks, and vehicles move extremely fast on them, posing a danger to pedestrians. Such roads run through even bustling townships, and speeding trucks and buses knock down many pedestrians and motorcycles daily. What one gathers from the numerous accidents shown on television daily is that vehicles, especially buses, trucks and motorcycles move like bats out of hell with the police doing precious little to control them. Why can’t cameras be installed to nab speedsters?

If the high-performance speedsters, as it were, are identified with the help of cameras and awarded tickets or hauled up before courts regularly, there will be a significant decrease in accidents. This method works well on expressways, where, as cynics say, drivers’ speeding skills are recognised at exit points, where the police courteously present them with detailed spot fine statements; why it is not employed elsewhere is the question. The government will be able to recover the cost of installing cameras in next to no time as the country is full of motorists who try to break the sound barrier.

Today, we carry an article on road accidents, which reveals that last year, the Stockholm Declaration adopted by the Third Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety focuses on speed management besides strengthening of law enforcement to prevent speeding––the leading cause of road fatalities––and mandating a maximus speed of 30 km/h, in places where road users and vehicles have to move in a planned manner. One may argue that in Colombo and its suburbs, vehicles cannot exceed the aforesaid speed limit except around midnight, but the lowering of speed limits will work in areas like busy townships through which arterial roads run.

A Presidential Task forces has been appointed to battle COVID-19. The need for such a national effort to tackle the scourge of road accidents as well cannot be overemphasised.