Contain these avoidable deaths

Our report on page one today that 2,300 persons die annually in road accidents in this country, while 25,000 others suffer non-fatal injuries in incidents of the same kind every year, should open the eyes of the authorities and those of the public to the enormity of the road accidents crisis which is proving overwhelmingly costly in human and monetary terms. Some 150 road accidents are reported every day , while five to six lives are lost on a daily basis in these incidents, our report went on to state. Bread winners of families and the young, figure prominently among these casualties.

While road accidents have been a cause for anxiety over the years, some satisfaction could be gained from reports that the Avurudu season witnessed a significant decline in the number of road mishaps. There was also a substantial dip in the crime rate during the New Year and we hope that these downward trends would continue in the days to come. These developments point to the fact that the ills in question are containable and could even be brought down to a minimum if the law is enforced stringently and consistently.

It is most heartening that no less a person than President Mahinda Rajapaksa has decided to keep a vigilant eye on road discipline and connected problems which have been dogging the common man at his heels over the years. He has done well to crack the whip on speeding security vehicles and the like, which have made highway travel increasingly nightmarish for the man of the street and we hope the law and order authorities would take a leaf from their Commander-in-Chief in this regard and be unrelenting in the application of the law in the matter of crime, road indiscipline and the multifarious other preventable blights which have sapped the country of some of its energy. The decisiveness shown by the President in this question, we hope, would prove infectious among our law enforcers.

If Sri Lanka is to make the best use of the economic opportunities that are opening up before it in the South Asian region and beyond, people’s productivity should be maintained at a maximum. Such productivity is unlikely to blossom in a situation where indiscipline in public life is rampant and of runaway proportions. While the discipline showed by our armed forces proved vital in the task of crushing terror and in making the country habitable once again, such iron discipline needs to be shown by the public at all levels if Sri Lanka is to cruise safely in the direction of development and material prosperity.

If despite obvious indiscipline in some quarters, Sri Lanka has notched a satisfactory and noteworthy eight percent economic growth rate over the past year, how much more phenomenal would be our economic achievements if indiscipline in all spheres was brought within containable limits and even eliminated? Such food for thought would make the case for eliminating road indiscipline all the more compelling, for such indiscipline is a crucial factor in human productivity. For example, if road accidents are drastically curtailed, not only could more priceless lives be preserved but the number of hours spent by the average employee in road congestion brought down substantially, thereby enabling the productive process to move forward uninhibited.

It could be established that in Sri Lanka, it is not so much the number of vehicles on our roads, but the indiscipline and woeful lack of civility among many of our motorists that is having a deleterious impact on law and order on our highways. The Police would provide the interested person or researcher with the relevant information in this regard. Prime among these violations by many of our motorists are: careless and drunken driving, lack of a sufficient awareness of road rules, lack of driving skills and overbearing, callous behaviour towards other motorists.

It is our conviction and that of many well meaning persons, that this state of disorder on many of our highways could be drastically eliminated. There is no alternative to cracking the whip hard on these ills. The authorities need to begin at the very beginning in attempting to fight these blights. That is, motorists’ licences should be issued to only those who are fully eligible to drive vehicles. In other words, driving tests should be entirely fool-proof. Next, if possible, spy cameras should be installed at all strategic points on our highways, and errant motorists fined heavily for their trespasses of the law. No clemency should be shown to drunks or ‘nuts’ at the wheel too.

Motorists need to be also schooled in the skills of civilized driving. Needless honking of horns, showing of fists, use of indecent, foul language by some motorists and many more misdemeanours, point to the fact that the law of the wild reigns very often on our roads. The authorities should address their minds to the ways and means of eliminating these destructive trends.