Friday 21st March, 2025

There has been a sharp increase in fatal accidents on Sri Lanka’s expressways during the past several years. On Tuesday night, a university lecturer lost his life and his family members sustained serious injuries in a mishap on the Kurunegala-Mirigama stretch of the Central Expressway. Road accidents cause about 2,500 deaths a year in Sri Lanka. Most of these accidents are preventable, according to road safety experts.

Public focus is typically on bereavement caused by road fatalities, but these incidents lead to serious social and economic issues as well. A World Bank (WB) report, Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka; Leadership Priorities and Initiatives to 2030, reveals that ‘the high road crash fatality and injury rates on Sri Lanka’s roads undermine the economic growth and progress made over the past decade on reducing poverty and boosting prosperity’. The report says the annual crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka are twice the average rate in high-income countries and five times that of the best performing countries in the world! Sri Lanka reportedly has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbours in the South Asia region. Numerous programmes have been implemented under successive governments to ensure road safety, but they have not yielded the desired results, and the Grim Reaper has been in overdrive.

Road safety experts have identified the following factors, inter alia, as the common causes of crashes on expressways and other roads, the world over: speeding, distracted driving, reckless driving, fatigue, driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, inclement weather conditions, inadequate road conditions, tailgating, improper lane changes, inexperience of drivers, overtaking dangerously, poor visibility, unroadworthy vehicles, poor signage or lack of road markings and impatience or time pressure. One of the aforesaid factors or a combination of two or more of them could lead to fatal accidents on any road. So, any strategy to prevent road mishaps consists in addressing those causes.

Crashes on expressways are usually rear-end collisions, as is obvious, and they involve heavy vehicles, in most cases. This is something the police should pay special attention to. On expressways, one can see many vehicles with taillights that are too dim to be noticed from a distance at night. Bulk haulers do not display properly-lit overlength signs. They pose a grave danger to other vehicles that ply at 100 kmph behind them at night. Such vehicles must not be allowed to use expressways or any other roads.

The police personnel stationed at interchanges are required to conduct visual inspections of vehicles, especially ill-maintained ones, that enter expressways to determine their roadworthiness, but they do not seem to carry out their duties and functions diligently. The only thing they do properly is to ticket errant drivers who exceed speed limits. Most drivers are aware of the expressway stretches that are not monitored by speed cameras, and they often tend to break speed limits in such areas, endangering their own lives as well as others’.

Countries such as South Korea, China, Australia, and Italy reportedly use drones equipped with speed detection technologies to monitor traffic, and this method is reported to have yielded impressive results. Sri Lanka should acquire the modern technologies to curb speeding, and the costs thereof can be passed on to errant drivers in the form of increases in fines for their efforts to break the sound barrier, as it were.

As for sleep-related road accidents, which have become a significant concern, there is a need for more rest areas along the expressways. Gadgets and technologies are available to monitor drivers’ eye movements and facial expressions and detect signs of drowsiness and fatigue. There are also steering wheel sensors to detect drowsiness of drivers. Modern vehicles come fitted with them, and some drowsiness detection systems can be retrofitted to older vehicles to help save lives. Making such technologies available at affordable prices should be part of any road safety programme.

The National Council for Road Safety, the police, etc., have been working tirelessly to make roads safe, but their efforts need a big fillip from the political authority. The above-mentioned WB report has said Sri Lanka will require an additional investment of almost US$ 2 billion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3.6 target of a 50% reduction in national road crash fatalities. This is a difficult target for a country emerging from an economic crisis, but it has to be achieved. The government should consider launching a national initiative similar to the Clean Sri Lanka programme to reduce road accidents.