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Heart of the Matter by Fathima Razik Cader

In the period 1997-2002, road traffic accidents in Sri Lanka has cost the country staggering sums of money with the figures for the year 2002 going up to Rs. 11.6 billion from Rs. 6.4. billion in 1997.

These calculations are based on the number of fatal, grievous and non-grievous accidents and damage to vehicles. In addition, the costs also include medical, loss of manpower, loss to family and society, damage to property and administration costs.

Road accidents are a major social problem worldwide and even developed countries have to contend with this situation which according to research done on the subject has been so for over 50 years.

Road accidents are a major social problem worldwide

Many development and Newly Industrialized Countries (NIC) have in past two decades seen rapid motorization (if one is permitted to use that word) and this has resulted in accidents progressively increasing. By extension, countries have to address the issues that have arisen with regard to road safety. Across the globe, annually, at least five hundred thousand people are killed in road accidents and 70 per cent of those killed are from developing countries. Road accidents are therefore a worldwide problem.

The situation in developed countries however, has been addressed and thereby contained. Research once again reveals that although vehicular traffic has increased tenfold, accidents remain at or below the level they were 50 years ago. Concerted effort by those concerned (at all levels of society) has contributed towards this positive feature - the major one being collecting and collating accident statistics, scientifically and logistically.

This has enabled those concerned with road safety to understand the nature of the accidents and how one could and should effectively apply counter-measures that are successful in reducing the number of accidents and do away with measures that are not successful.

Accidents are costly in terms of finance and it has been found in road safety that it is possible to spend large sums of money and get little or no reduction in accidents whereas a very cheap measure, applied in the right place, at the right time, can sometimes be very effective in reducing accidents. Therefore to get value for money, a scientific approach to road safety has been adopted in many countries, both to analyze the problem and apply remedial measures. This scientific approach is based on reliable accidents - the essential basis for this exercised.

Sri Lanka's Traffic Police has woken up to the fact that the existing accident data system is rather antiquated and therefore should be replaced, pronto! 'Better late than never' is apt under the circumstances and one should appreciate that this vital division of the Police Force has begun to get its act together - a step certainly in the right direction.

In collaboration with the National Road Safety Secretariat (NRSS) of the Ministry of Transport, Highways and Civil Aviation and SweRoad, the Swedish consultancy firm, the Traffic Police is currently actively revamping the entire accident data system. SweRoad is a subsidiary of the Swedish National Road Administration under the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Sweden. Its portfolio includes consultancy service within the road and transport sector, advisory services and technical assistance to government agencies and local authorities.

Funded by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF), Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the new system - Micro Accident Analysis Package (MAAP), produced in the United Kingdom, was introduced on January 1st this year. MAAP is one of the few systems in the world that are applied in developing countries.

The existing system in Sri Lanka has Police Officers arriving at the scene of the accident and recording the place, date, time and nature of the accident in addition to recording to numbers/injured or dead. This information is woefully inadequate to ascertain in a given study, how to reduce the number of accidents.

The new system now introduced, in contrast, has a prescribed form that has to be filled by an officer at the location of the accident and this form covers every aspect with regard to the accident. This information is then fed into the computer of the local police station which will then be forwarded to the divisional Police and in turn to the Traffic Police at the Police headquarters.

Thus the information pertaining to the accident is stored and could be accessed from any one of the three centres making it readily available at all levels. It has been found that all these years, the actual recording of data by the Police and storing and analyzing such data has been ineffective.

With its low-cost easy-to-use system, MAAP, originally developed in the early 1980s, was found to be flexible in its record format and capable of in-depth analysis at local level in addition to being capable of generating analyses at provincial or national level. It therefore appears tailor-made for Sri Lanka and the Traffic Police has realized the need for such a programme at this point in time.

S. Wickremasinghe, Director, Traffic and Road Safety at the Police Headquarters is in overall charge in the implementation of the programme which begins with training Police Officers from all the Police Divisions in Sri Lanka. And assisting the Police Officers grasp the intricacies of this new recording format are officials from the National Road Safety Secretariat (NRSS) and SweRoad.

Kurt Fahleson, SweRoad's Resident Representative in Sri Lanka was very clear in his approach to solving any problem, he says, "The bottom line is any situation is that you have to know the problem to solve the problem".

When questioned as to how this new recording format can assist in reducing the number of road accidents and the resultant costs to the country, Fahleson replied that the first step is to know very clearly how accidents occur and this could be traced to the location, the time, the number of accidents that occur at a particular location as against accidents in other areas - points considered vital that once recorded, will be collated and a picture will emerge.

This will show how such an accident can be avoided by putting into place counter-measures. In reply to another question on how the Police Officers are responding to the new accident recording format, Sascha Fernando, IT Consultant, SweRoad, said that the Police (trainees) are very keen and enthusiastic and in fact, have grasped the nitty gritty of it in next to no time.

Fernando was certainly a happy man as the enthusiasm of the officers has made his task to training the Police Officers that much easier.

The mood therefore is up-beat-because hopefully, in the not too distant future (maybe as early as in 2004), Sri Lanka's road accident rate will be contained. This translates into that many lives and property (vehicles) saved.

It further translates to an enormous saving for the country at large, which sum could be channelled to other needy areas of development. The attitude of the Traffic Police could well be emulated by the other divisions of the Police Force - something the citizens of this country will whole-heartedly welcome.

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