Columns

The recent tragic bus accident near the Gerandi Ella waterfall in Ramboda has once again brought Sri Lanka’s road safety crisis into sharp focus. In the early hours of the morning, an SLTB bus plunged into a 100-foot precipice, claiming 23 lives and injuring 35 others. The scale of the tragedy is a stark reminder of the persistent dangers on the country’s roads, where preventable accidents have become a distressingly routine occurrence.

A recurring tragedy

This accident is a grim reflection of a larger, ongoing tragedy. Sri Lanka, a country scarred by decades of armed conflict, now faces a new kind of human cost — lives lost unnecessarily to poorly regulated road conditions, driver fatigue, and insufficient enforcement of safety regulations. These deaths are not mere statistics but individual lives, each with a ripple effect of grief and economic loss for their families.

The Acting Inspector General of Police, Priyantha Weerasooriya, responded to the Kotmale tragedy by appointing a committee to investigate the incident, with a deadline of May 30 to submit its findings. However, early reports suggest that determining the exact cause of the accident may prove challenging. According to initial findings, the bus departed from Kataragama and was en route to Kurunegala via Nuwara Eliya, carrying approximately 50 to 75 passengers. It had reportedly undergone a mechanical check at the Kataragama SLTB Depot before the journey, and the driver, being one familiar with the route, had taken his mandatory rest stops as required by SLTB regulations.

Eyewitness accounts
and preliminary findings

One survivor described the moments before the crash, stating that the bus was descending the steep Ramboda Pass at high speed when the driver abruptly applied the brakes, causing the vehicle to veer off the road and plunge into the ravine. Survivors recalled the chaos and terror of the moment, emphasising the inherent dangers of Sri Lanka’s mountainous roads, which have claimed numerous lives over the years. Just a day after the Kotmale tragedy, another vehicle plunged into a precipice in the same area, injuring 11 passengers,
underscoring the urgent need for comprehensive road
safety measures.

Convener of the Road Safety Task Force Dr. Sanjay Perera has highlighted some home truths about the public transport sector and its deficiencies. Besides factors such as overloading and drivers’ fatigue, the poor quality of buses on Sri Lankan roads also contributes to ever increasing road accidents, he has said.

Dr. Perera has pointed out that most buses are not worthy of the name, for they are actually truck chassis fitted with seats; these ‘truck-buses’, as it were, are without any safety features.

Poor policing too has contributed to the dangers posed to members of the public. A few years ago, the Police launched a program to ensure that drivers on Duplication Road and Galle Road stayed in their respective lanes without haphazard driving by crisscrossing lanes. This worked well, with traffic moving in a disciplined way, but after some time the Police lost interest and traffic was back to its wayward ways.

One hardly sees the Police stopping a vehicle for dangerous driving and disciplining drivers. It seems they prefer to book those who park in the wrong place or some such trivial offences. While these are no doubt important, it is even more important to ensure the safety of road users.

After the fatal bus accident near Kotmale, the Police launched a programme to inspect long-distance buses at night in Hatton and detected some offenders. This is a welcome measure but will have to be sustained if it is to have any degree of success.

Another distressing feature of our transport system is the news that there are many drug users behind the wheels on
Sri Lanka roads.

The President of the
Private Bus Owners Association Gemunu Wijeratne himself once stated that many bus drivers were consumers of narcotic drugs.

According to Reports the Police conducted a pilot drug test among bus drivers at the end of June last year, and it was found that close to 100 bus drivers out of 1,781 in the Western Province were drug users.

This is a scary proposition, and the Police would do well to do regular tests on bus drivers throughout the country and take such drivers off the road in the interest of road users as well as passengers.

A World Bank Report of a few years back has some startling statistics. The report estimates the annual road crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka as the highest among its immediate neighbors in South Asia. According to the World Bank Report,  road crash fatalities and injuries could cost countries like Sri Lanka between 3-5% of their GDP annually and would require $2 billion additional investment to combat road safety crisis.

The report also points out that high road crash fatality and injury rates on Sri Lanka’s roads are undermining economic growth and progress over the past decade as well as attempts to reduce poverty and boost prosperity. Over two thirds of road crash victims are productive, working age adults between 15-64 years of age, states the World Bank.

According to the World Bank report this situation is exacerbated by the rapid growth in vehicle ownership – 67% between 2011 and 2018 – and the diversity of motorised and non-motorised traffic of varying sizes and speeds leaving vulnerable road users without adequate protection – as more than 90% of crash victims are pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.

While the economic cost to the country is of concern what is even more heartbreaking is the human cost to those who fall victim to the country’s unsatisfactory public transport system. If one looks at the death toll of 23 and 35 injured in the Kotmale accident it would mean at least 58 families affected without breadwinners and lives full of hardships and tears. It is the responsibility of the Sri Lankan State to provide a safe public transport system to the citizenry as well as a safe environment for road users. This is one of the areas in which the Sri Lankan State has clearly failed.

(javidyusuf@gmail.com)