Opinion
Medical students and wild jumbos destined for disaster?
Medical students in the vicinity of the Colombo National Hospital and wild elephants crossing railway lines in rural Sri Lanka share a common trait: they cannot be seen at night.
Today’s medical students wear dark-blue uniforms which are not ‘high-viz’ on the dimly lit roads of the National Hospital precinct. Too many close calls and near misses involving motor vehicles and medical students now demand that the problem needs urgent addressing by the relevant authorities.
There was a time when street lighting around the National Hospital was so good that nurses could walk safely at any time of the night. Besides which, they always wore white.
Basic road safety rules in many countries demand that pedestrians and even motorcycle riders and bicyclists wear light-coloured clothing at night to make them clearly seen by motorists. One simple solution may be to have the above-mentioned Sri Lankan pedestrians incorporate a reflective strip in their attire.
But will the people in charge become motivated to improve safety only after a fatal or otherwise serious accident occurs? To quote an old adage: an ounce of prevention is better than a ton of cure.
Almost every week, wild elephants are being killed on our railway tracks in collisions with trains; sometimes, as happened recently, with the deaths of multiple animals in one incident. Almost certainly at the core of this problem is a lack of visibility, as elephants merge with the darkness rendering them almost unseen by locomotive drivers until it’s too late to avert impact. Another contributory factor is the inherent characteristic of a train travelling at 40 kph taking 400 metres to stop upon emergency application of its brakes.
A possible solution to avoid such collisions is the use of military-developed ‘night vision’ goggles that could be used by the drivers while traversing, at a slower speed, known areas of elephant presence. That would be the next best thing to an electric fence preventing elephant crossings; or elevating the railway line with tunnels below.
Alternatively, relatively inexpensive radar devices could be modified for railway use to detect elephants at night. The technology used in such devices is not dissimilar to that of obstacle sensors in most modern motor vehicles.
Taking the ‘tech’ a step further, consider how a radio altimeter in an aircraft bounces vertical radio waves off the ground to give an accurate indication of its proximity, up to a maximum of 2,500ft between terrain and airplane. Could that principle and technology be adapted for use in a locomotive to scan obstacles on a horizontal plane? What about the use of laser driven devices? The possibilities are many.
For instance, installation of motion sensors and spotlights beside railway tracks in areas prone to collisions with elephants, cattle, etc. ( By the way, whatever happened to Cowcatchers?). A former General Manager of Railways suggested using electronically activated flares at regular intervals, as a possible solution.
Another alternative could be wind-driven noise generators producing the ‘buzz’ of bees to deter elephants from getting close to moving trains. (But might that be as useless as the so-called ‘kangaroo whistle’ intended for animal collision avoidance on Australian outback and country roads, a device which scientists and road-testing have proved to be ineffective and nothing more than a gimmick?)
The train/elephant conflict crisis in Sri Lanka is nothing new. But it’s getting worse, as elephants’ traditional territory is being encroached on and reduced for a variety of reasons. This forces the animals to constantly seek other feeding and breeding ‘pastures’, thus endangering their safety and that of rail and road users.
Meanwhile, has Sri Lanka Railways done enough research into solving the problem? Or, like the road traffic authorities in Colombo, are they sitting on their hands, ‘fat, dumb and happy’, waiting for disaster to strike?
GUWAN SEEYA