Police sound alarm over mounting road fatalities as motorcycles dominate the country’s vehicle population and younger riders remain particularly vulnerable
COLOMBO, Thursday – More than 1,600 people have lost their lives in road accidents in Sri Lanka, according to figures disclosed by Police Thursday, placing renewed focus on a continuing national crisis that kills with disturbing regularity but often attracts attention only one collision at a time.
Police have highlighted motorcycle accidents as a particular concern, including fatalities involving younger riders, against the background of an enormous increase in the number of motorcycles using Sri Lankan roads.
There are now more than 9.2 million registered vehicles in the country, of which over 5.2 million are motorcycles.
That means motorcycles account for more than half the country’s registered vehicle population – placing millions of riders on roads where congestion, speeding, poor discipline, inadequate infrastructure and inconsistent enforcement can combine with devastating consequences.
Unlike occupants of cars, motorcyclists have little physical protection when an accident occurs. A collision that damages a motor vehicle can kill or permanently disable the person travelling on two wheels.
The consequences extend far beyond the casualty figures.
Many victims are working-age Sri Lankans whose families depend upon their incomes. A road death can therefore simultaneously become a financial catastrophe for a household, while serious injuries impose additional costs upon families and the State health system.
Successive governments have attempted to improve road safety through stronger enforcement, awareness campaigns and changes to traffic regulations. Yet the continuing death toll suggests that Sri Lanka’s approach requires more than periodic crackdowns following particularly horrific accidents.
Enforcement against speeding, dangerous overtaking, intoxicated driving and reckless riding must be consistent rather than episodic. Road design, pedestrian protection, driver training and vehicle standards must form part of the same conversation.
So too must responsibility.
Drivers and riders cannot demand safer roads while treating traffic laws as optional, just as the State cannot demand better behaviour while failing to provide adequate enforcement and reasonably safe infrastructure.
Behind the figure of 1,600 are more than 1,600 individual stories – families receiving telephone calls, police officers arriving at homes and journeys from which someone never returned.
Sri Lanka has rightly devoted enormous national resources to confronting crises that threaten life and economic security.
Road deaths deserve the same seriousness.
Be that as it may, when more than 1,600 people die on our roads, the word “accident” begins to sound increasingly inadequate.
